The payout phase of pension systems : a comparison of five countries

This paper provides a comparative summary of the payout phase of pension systems in five countries -- Australia, Chile, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland. All five countries have large pension systems with mandatory or quasi-mandatory retirement savings schemes. But they exhibit important differences in the structure and role of different pillars, regulation of payout options, level of annuitization, market structure, capital regulations, risk management, and use of risk sharing arrangements. The paper summarizes the experience of these countries and highlights the lessons they offer to other countries.Pensions&Retirement Systems,Debt Markets,Emerging Markets,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Investment and Investment Climate

Fitness sharing and niching methods revisited

Interest in multimodal optimization function is expanding rapidly since real-world optimization problems often require the location of multiple optima in the search space. In this context, fitness sharing has been used widely to maintain population diversity and permit the investigation of many peaks in the feasible domain. This paper reviews various strategies of sharing and proposes new recombination schemes to improve its efficiency. Some empirical results are presented for high and a limited number of fitness function evaluations. Finally, the study compares the sharing method with other niching techniques

Labour Force Behaviour of Men and Women in Elderly Two-Adult Households: Evidence from EU Countries. ENEPRI Research Reports No. 7, 1 April 2005

This paper studies the effect of individual and spousal characteristics on the labour force participation of individuals living in elderly two-adult households. The comparative approach taken here studies men and women separately and uses the first eight waves (1994-2001) of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). We compare results of three countries: Finland (a country with a high degree of women’s labour force participation), Belgium and Germany (countries where women’s labour force participation is relatively low). Results of multinomial logit model estimations suggest that are substantive differences between countries as well as between the behaviour of men and women across the various channels out of employment. We find evidence that a wife exerts a stronger influence on a husband’s retirement decision. One explanation for this may be found in asymmetric complementarities of leisure – a husband’s enjoyment of non-employment may depend much more on his wife also being non-employed than vice versa. There is evidence that the complementarities of leisure hypothesis dominates the hypothesis concerning the added worker (where the labour supply of one spouse increases when the other spouse’s income is reduced or disappears). These results are in line with evidence from the US and have some important implications: simulations of the effect of changes in the pension system on men’s retirement may yield incorrect answers if spillover effects are ignored

Electricity Network Scenarios for Great Britain in 2050

The next fifty years are likely to see great developments in the technologies deployed in electricity systems, with consequent changes in the structure and operation of power networks. This paper, which forms a chapter in the forthcoming book Future Electricity Technologies and Systems, develops and presents six possible future electricity industry scenarios for Great Britain, focussed on the year 2050. The paper draws upon discussions of important technologies presented by expert authors in other chapters of the book to consider the impact of different combinations of key influences on the nature of the power system in 2050. For each scenario there is a discussion of the effects of the key parameters, with a description and pictorial illustration. Summary tables identify the role of the technologies presented in other chapters of the book, and list important figures of interest, such as the capacity and energy production of renewable generation technologies

The life cycle distributional consequence of pay-as-you-go and funded pension systems

Using a dynamic cohort microsimulation model (LIFEMOD), the authors examine the life-cycle distributional consequences of a variety of pay-as-you-go (PAYG) and funded pension systems. This technique allows them to investigate both the socioeconomic characteristics and the number of people affected by a change in contribution or eligibility rules in any pension system. LIFEMOD uses 1985 parameters for the United Kingdom so specific results are not valid for other countries. But winners and losers are likely to be similar across countries. They find the following: Women benefit much more than men in a flat-rate PAYG system. In simulations, 84 percent of surviving women but only 33 percent of surviving men are net beneficiaries, because women have higher life expectancy and lower lifetime earnings. Imposing minimum contributions substantially reduces the number of women who qualify for a pension. Imposing a joint contribution rule on the earnings of married couples significantly increases the number of women qualifying without significantly reducing the proportion of qualifying men. In funded pension systems, on average men accumulate much more pension capital than women do because of men's higher earnings and more continuous paid work. Different rates of real interest and earnings growth affect individuals'fund accumulation differently. Women benefit more from high rates of return and low earnings growth because they tend to receive a higher proportion of their lifetime earnings when young. But some men and many women fail to achieve minimum pension levels. If the pension shortfall is compensated for by lump-sum capital top-ups, women receive 93 percent of top-ups (70 percent if joint contributions are used). In hybrid pension systems that combine both PAYG and funded elements, the higher the proportion of PAYG payments, the greater the replacement rate for people in the bottom 40 percent of the lifetime earnings distribution (the majority of whom are women). But replacement rates for people in the middle of income distribution are insensitive to any variant of the PAYG-funded combination. In short, flat-rate pay-as-you-go pension plans and funded pensions produce very different distributional outcomes, the single most important determinant of which is the different lifetime employment and earnings records of men and women.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Pensions&Retirement Systems,Population&Development,Information Technology,Demographics

European pension systems: a simulation analysis

Pension systems in different countries vary widely in such aspects as the dependence of benefits on earlier labour income, the minimum permitted retirement age and limits on labour supply after retirement. This paper uses a simulation model of a rational, utility-maximising household facing the detailed pension provisions of eight European countries to study microeconomic distortions induced by the different rules and regulations. We examine in particular the impact on savings, labour supply, retirement age decisions and welfare.