In the last century, state pension systems have been introduced in most countries, and since then their size has been significantly increasing. A broad literature has studied this phenomenon, developing models that explain why pension systems exist and have been continuously expanding. At the...

A broad political economy literature explained the introduction and expansion of pension systems, but the effects caused by the endogenous reduction of fertility have been largely disregarded, as the fertility choice is usually considered exogenous. This paper suggests a model that takes into...

This second edition of Pensions at a Glance updates all the important indicators of retirement-income systems developed for the first edition. The values of all pension system parameters reflect the situation in the year 2004. The general approach adopted is a “microeconomic” one, looking at...

The central purpose of this paper is to introduce a new political economy explanation to modern Social Security Systems. This approach is based on the Single-Mindedness Theory (SMT), which assumes that the more single-minded groups are able to exert a greater power of influence on Governments...

We show that the introduction of unfunded public pensions in a Cobb-Douglas economy with overlapping generations and endogenous fertility may cause complex economic cycles when individuals are short-sighted. In particular, the risk of cyclical instability increases with both the individual...

This paper investigates the steady state and dynamical effects of two historical alternatives as a means of old-age insurance – i.e., voluntary intra-family transfers from young to old members versus pay-as-you-go public pensions –, in a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with...

A broad political economics literature explains the introduction and expansion of pension systems, but the effects caused by the endogenous reduction of fertility are typically disregarded, as the fertility choice is usually considered exogenous. This paper suggests a political model that takes...

This paper surveys a dozen international comparative studies of poverty, income distribution and older people in industrialized countries using data up to the mid-1990s. It addresses a series of questions. At what level are the incomes of the elderly relative to the population as a whole? How...

In this paper I will introduce a new political economy model, where there exists a competition amongst two political candidates, which aim to set a policy which enables them to win elections, max- imising the probability of winning. I will show that, if taxes neces- sary to repay the debt are...

In this paper I analyse a labour market where the wage is endogenously determined according to an Efficient Bargaining process between a firm and a labour union whose members are partitioned into two social groups: the old and the young. Furthermore, I exploit the Single-Mindedness theory, which...