Pension Reform : A Short Guide

Nicholas Barr

ISBN 10: 0195387724 / ISBN 13: 9780195387728

Editore: Oxford University Press, 2009

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nach der Bestellung gedruckt Neuware - Printed after ordering - This is an abridgement of Barr and Diamond's 'Reforming Pensions: Principles and Policy Choices' (OUP, 2008), a larger book that is intended for policy makers and as a supplement in college courses. The problem. Mandatory pension systems are a worldwide phenomenon. However, with given contribution rates, monthly benefits and retirement ages, pension systems are not consistent with three long-run trends - declining mortality, declining fertility, and earlier retirement. Thus many systems need reform. Principles. This book gives an extensive but nontechnical explanation of the economics of pension design. The theoretical arguments have three elements. 1. Pension systems have multiple objectives - consumption smoothing, insurance, poverty relief, and redistribution. Good policy needs to bear them all in mind. 2. Good analysis should be framed in a second-best context - simple economic models are a bad guide to policy design in a world with imperfect information and decision-making, incomplete markets and taxation. 3. Any choice of pension system has distributional consequences, which the book recognizes explicitly. The analysis includes discussion of labor markets, capital markets, risk sharing and gender and family, with comparison of PAYG and funded systems, recognizing that the suitable level of funding differs by country. Alongside the economic principles of good design, policy must also take account of a country's capacity to implement the system. Thus the theoretical analysis is complemented by discussion of implementation, and of experiences, both good and bad, in many countries, with particular attention to China and Chile. Policy conclusions: 1. Sound application of the principles outlined above can and does lead to widely different systems in different country settings. 2. Unless there are transfers from outside the system, any improvement to the finances of a pension system must involve one or more of (a) higher contribution rates, (b) lower monthly pensions, (c) later retirement at the same monthly pension, (d) policies designed to increase national output. 3.The previous statement holds whatever the degree of funding. If a public pension is regarded as unsustainable the problem needs to be addressed directly by one of these methods.

Codice articolo 9780195387728

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Pension Reform : A Short Guide
• Editore: Oxford University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2009
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0195387724
• ISBN 13: 9780195387728
• Rilegatura: Taschenbuch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 234 L x 156 A x 14 P (millimetri) 234 millimetri di larghezza per 156 millimetri di altezza per 14 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 404 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

This book is an abridgement of Barr and Diamond's Reforming Pensions: Principles and Policy Choices (OUP, 2008) It begins with the introduction to the earlier book, includes the concluding chapters to the sections on principles and on policy choices and the concluding policy chapter to the book. It summarizes the Chile and China chapters into a section of five pages. It presents material from some of the boxes of the longer book. While the longer book remains as a definitive and detailed analysis of pension reform, this new, shorter book conveys the message and conclusions to policy makers, journalists writing for the general public, and students being introduced to social security and other pension policy. The topic being condensed and summarized here is described at length in the earlier book. It stems from rapidly changing economic conditions and dramatic increases in life expectancy. Newspaper headlines across the globe anticipate again and again a massive rupture of social security and retirement systems. With public fears on the rise, officials in many countries under pressure to solve problems quickly are turning their backs on traditional pay-as-you-go systems in favor of privately financed retirement plans. Barr and Diamond demonstrate that in the age of globalization these problems are no longer simply domestic problems. Because trade borders are becoming increasingly open and digital transactions are hastily erasing national economic boundaries, countries are no longer able to act independently in setting pension policies. These problems are particularly exacerbated in China, a state where massive restructuring of state-owned enterprises and comparatively recent dynamic entry into global markets have already taxed a system whose enormous burden is to support the retirement of the world's largest national population. The authors address these issues comprehensively in a thorough survey of pension econom

Informazioni sull'autore

Nicholas Barr is Professor of Public Economics at the London School of Economics, the author of numerous books and articles, and a Trustee of HelpAge International. He spent two periods at the World Bank working on income transfers in Central and Eastern Europe and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Fiscal Affairs Department at the IMF. He has been active in debates about pension reform and higher education finance, advising governments in the post-communist countries, and in the UK, Australia, Chile, China, Hungary, New Zealand and South Africa.