A means tested minimum income for old age creates an incentive for some not to save for old age and instead to free ride. Recent literature is undecided to what extent this inefficient savings distortion should be addressed by a compulsory pension system because resulting labour-leisure...

A means-tested minimum income for old age creates an incentive for some not to save for old age and instead to free ride. Recent literature is undecided to what extent this inefficient savings distortion should be addressed by a compulsory pension system because resulting labour-leisure...

This paper makes two contributions to the literature. First, by employing a macro-level institutional dataset on benefit levels for social assistance (SA) and minimum income protection (MIP) in 22 European countries in the period 1990–2013, I show that the adequacy of income support for...

We empirically investigate the distributional consequences of the Riester scheme, the main private pension subsidization program in Germany. We find that 38% of the aggregate subsidy accrues to the top two deciles of the population, but only 7.3% to the bottom two. Nonetheless the Riester scheme...

This paper assesses Italy’s 2019 tax and benefit reforms, analyses hypothetical reforms and proposes a reform package that balances goals of reducing poverty, encouraging employment and fiscal sustainability. Using the OECD’s Tax-Benefit and the EUROMOD microsimulation models, it shows that...

This paper examines the degree of substitution between public pension wealth and private saving by studying Poland's 1999 pension reform. The analysis identifies the effect of pension wealth on private saving using cohort-by-time variation in pension wealth induced by the reform. The estimates,...

We evaluate the impact on youth crime of a welfare reform that tightened activation requirements for social assistance clients. The evaluation strategy exploits administrative individual data in combination with geographically differentiated implementation of the reform. We find that the reform...

The benefits of implementing Unemployment Insurance Savings Accounts (UISAs) are studied in the presence of the multiple sources of information frictions often existing in developing countries. A benchmark incomplete markets economy is calibrated to Mexico in the early 2000s. The unconstrained...

In order to study whether public pension systems displace private saving, we use the quasiexperimental variation in pension wealth created by Poland's 1999 pension reform. Using the 1997–2003 Polish Household Budget Surveys, we begin by estimating "difference-indifferences" regressions, where...

Social transfers vary enormously across the EU, as has been demonstrated in earlier research. This paper analyses the comparative effects of cash transfers on inequality and poverty, using consistent household data. The analysis shows that the distributional impact of these transfers is greater...