We document the presence of a trade-off between unemployment benefits (UB) and employment protection legislation (EPL) in the provision of insurance against labour market risk. The mix of quantity restrictions and price regulations adopted by the various countries would seem to correspond to a...

All OECD countries target a large majority of their welfare spending to the elderly, through public pensions and health care programs. Spending in both programs has largely increased in the past decades -- often more than the share of elderly in the population. We suggest that these phenomena...

This paper investigates whether or not the adoption of the Euro has facilitated the introduction of structural reforms, defined as deregulation in the product markets and liberalization and deregulation in the labor markets. After reviewing the theoretical arguments that may link the adoption of...

Recent reforms of the Italian social security system (Amato-Dini reforms) aimed at reversing the upward trend in Government pension spending. The main provisions of these reforms are: i) the adoption of a (unfunded) defined contribution system as a basis for computing pensions benefits, ii) a...

Le riforme del sistema pensionistico italiano contenute nei provvedimenti Amato-Dini si sono poste l'obiettivo del contenimento della crescita della spesa pensionistica mediante: i) il passaggio al metodo contributivo per il calcolo dei benefici pensionistici, ii) la riduzione degli incentivi al...

type="main" xml:lang="en" <title type="main">SUMMARY</title> </section> <title type="main">Politics, ageing and pensions</title> <p> What is the future of social security systems in OECD countries? We suggest that the answer belongs to the realm of politics, and evaluate how political constraints and ageing shape the social security system. The increasing ratio...</p>

We study how the prevailing internal organization of the family affected the initial design of pension systems. Our theoretical framework predicts that, in society with weak family ties, pensions systems were introduced to act as a safety net, while in societies with strong ties they replicate...