This paper analyzes effects of tax-favored savings plans on savings and retirement decisions in a realistically specified life-cycle model. Individuals face mortality risk and stochastic earnings, allocate assets between conventional savings accounts (CSAs) and tax-deferred accounts (TDAs), make...

In this paper, we conduct a U.S.- Japan comparison of the importance of retirement saving and of the determinants thereof using micro data from the "U.S.- Japan Comparison Survey of Saving," a binational household survey conducted in 1996 by the Institute for Posts and Telecommunications Policy...

This paper explores the optimal risk sharing arrangement between generations in an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth. We allow for nonseparable preferences, paying particular attention to the risk aversion of the old as well as overall ``life-cycle´´ risk aversion. We...

We investigate intergenerational risk sharing in two-pillar pension systems with a pay-as-you-go pillar and a funded pillar. We consider shocks in productivity, depreciation of capital and inflation. The funded pension pillar can be either defined contribution or defined benefit, with benefits...

Across industrialised and developing countries public pension systems have been heavily reformed during the last two decades. The major concern relates the sustainability of pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension schemes. To solve public pension system crisis many proposals were issued to privatize social...

Australia is in the early stages of introducing a system of self-provision for retirement through mandatory contributions to private superannuation funds. For most employees, the scheme will eventually replace, either fully or partially, the government age pension, currently relied upon by a...

We estimate the portfolio effect of changes in social security wealth exploiting a decade of Italian pension reforms as a source of exogenous variation. The Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth records detailed portfolio data and elicits expectations of retirement outcomes, thus...

This paper studies a quantitative dynamic general equilibrium life-cycle model where parents and their children are linked by bequests, both voluntary and accidental, and by the transmission of earnings ability. This model is able to match very well the empirical observation that households with...

Using a representative sample of Italian investors, we estimate the risk associated with pension benefits by eliciting for each individual the subjective distribution of the replacement rate as a summary indicator of social security wealth. We find substantial heterogeneity of pension risk and...

A precautionary saving model is extended to include old-age pensions and provides the framework for an empirical analysis of the relation between old-age pensions and private consumption. Norwegian macro-data for socioeconomic groups of households are used to estimate consumption functions for...