This report reviews defined contribution pension return guarantees typically made by governments in connection with pension privatizations. Finance theory related to the pricing of options provides a unifying framework for evaluating the cost of these guarantees. The report considers two types...

This paper reviews the experience of Armenia with the displacement of more than 7,000 teachers during 2003-07 as part of structural reforms in general education. In addition to supplementary severance payments, a variety of services were needed to address difficulties commonly experienced by...

All over the world, pension systems have financing difficulties that need to be addressed. There are three ways of dealing with pension systems problems - finance it to a greater extent from general revenues, rationalize the system, or a full-fledged reform. After several years of political and...

In June of 1997 Kazakhstan embarked on a dramatic reform of its pension system, replacing the inherited pay as you go regime with one based entirely on fully funded individual accounts. This paper provides projections of the effects of this reform on income replacement rates and considers some...

This paper focuses on the experience of the transition countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, in providing adequate safety nets for the poor during the last ten years. The paper discusses the problem of poverty, and vulnerability, and looks at the typical types of interventions offered by...

Collective bargaining and dispute resolution mechanisms facilitate coordination. Coordination is increasingly seen as an influential determinant of labor market and macroeconomic performance. This paper provides a systematic review of the relevant literature with a specific focus on the role...

The paper presents the main approaches, and tools to measuring poverty, and vulnerability. This involves among other things, the important issues of the setting of poverty lines, of the statistical use of surveys, of the empirical measurement of living standards, and of making poverty...

In this paper, the authors provide an overview of the recent international experience with active labor market programs (ALMPs). Basing the evidence on the growing body of program evaluations, it focuses on the impacts of ALMPs on the subsequent employment and earnings of participants. This...

This report looks at pension reform recently undertaken in Poland, but draws conclusions with wider applicability. It examines the motivation for reform, the struggle of progressively minded experts and politicians to advance the reform agenda, the architecture of the new system, and issues...

This paper describes the recent Swedish reform, and available options on major issues within this reform framework. In June 1994, Sweden's Parliament passed legislation replacing the old defined benefit system, with a combination of pay-as-you-go notional defined contribution (NDC), and a DC...