We show how the age prole of earnings, retirement rules and retirement behavior are tightly linked through the general equilibrium of the economy. Generous Social Security benets nanced by large Social Security taxes discourage human capital accumulation. In Social Security systems where Social...

There is ample empirical evidence documenting widespread financial illiteracy and limited pension knowledge. At the same time, the distribution of wealth is widely dispersed and many workers arrive on the verge of retirement with few or no personal assets. In this paper, we investigate the...

In this paper we evaluate the expected evolution of the Trattamento di ?ne rapporto over the Italian employees?working life careers. We use adiminstrative (INPS) data to disentangle the amount that is expected to be accumulated until retirement, the amount expected not to accrue because of...

This paper analyses aggregate household wealth in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the UK and the US. Building on a new data set for the time span 1980-2011, we discuss the trends in household financial assets in the last thirty years, the reasons for differences across countries,...

Understanding Financial Accounts seeks to show how a range of questions on financial developments can be answered with the framework of financial accounts and balance sheets, by providing non-technical explanations illustrated with practical examples: What are the basic principles, concepts and...