Lessons for Asian Countries from Pension Reforms in Chile

Chile's 1981 reform revolutionized pension design and created a system that was lauded and emulated widely. The main feature of the system was the creation of state-mandated, privately managed individual pension capitalization accounts based on contributions of employees. After nearly three decades of experience, there is a reassessment of the extent to which the pension system has achieved its objectives, particularly with respect to coverage and adequacy. In March 2006, the newly elected President Bachelet set up a Presidential Advisory Council on Pension Reform under the chairmanship of Mario Marcel to evaluate the existing pension system. This paper examines the rationale and the nature of the recommendations made by the Council. The analysis focuses on the structure of the proposed new pension system and risk-sharing implications of different pillars of the system, the accessibility of the existing pension system in terms of coverage, particularly for women and self-employed persons, the impact of reform on transaction costs; investment policies and management and their implications for rates of return and financial market development. The implications of the new system on pension design and policy debate in Asian countries are addressed. The paper suggests that must imbibe lessons from countries such as Chile and urgently undertake the task of constructing sustainable, robust and adequate pension systems and social safety nets.Chile, Asia, Pension Reform

Quantification of abnormal repetitive behaviour in captive European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris).

Stereotypies are repetitive, unvarying and goalless behaviour patterns that are often considered indicative of poor welfare in captive animals. Quantifying stereotypies can be difficult, particularly during the early stages of their development when behaviour is still flexible. We compared two methods for objectively quantifying the development of route-tracing stereotypies in caged starlings. We used Markov chains and T-pattern analysis (implemented by the software package, Theme) to identify patterns in the sequence of locations a bird occupied within its cage. Pattern metrics produced by both methods correlated with the frequency of established measures of stereotypic behaviour and abnormal behaviour patterns counted from video recordings, suggesting that both methods could be useful for identifying stereotypic individuals and quantifying stereotypic behaviour. We discuss the relative benefits and disadvantages of the two approaches

The pension system in Singapore

Singapore is an affluent city state which finances its social security system through a mandatory, publicly managed, defined contribution system based on individual accounts. The main vehicle embodying this is the Central Provident Fund (CPF). There are two other pension systems operating in Singapore: 1) Non-contributory pension scheme for the government employees; and 2) provident fund scheme for the certain categories of armed forces personnel called the Savings and Employees Scheme. The report makes a thorough assessment of the CPF. Then it is followed by a discussion of reform options which could help provide adequate level of retirement protection to the population in a sustainable manner while maintaining Singapore's international competitiveness for attracting requisite investments, and professional and technical manpower.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Public Sector Economics,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Market Structure and Challenges for Annuities in India

India will need to develop a robust annuity market if it is to enable its rapidly aging population to address longevity risk. As the fraction aged triples by 2050, driving a huge potential demand for annuity-type products that will need to be matched by responses from annuity providers. Developing a deeper and broader market for annuities will require disaggregated morbidity and mortality databases for better price discovery; supply of financial instruments enabling better matching of assets and long-term liabilities; innovations in annuity products and distribution channels; greater financial literacy, and more robust regulation

Gravitating monopoles in SU(3) gauge theory

We consider the Einstein-Yang-Mills-Higgs equations for an SU(3) gauge group in a spherically symmetric ansatz. Several properties of the gravitating monopole solutions are obtained an compared with their SU(2) counterpart.Comment: 7 pages, Latex, 3 figure

Relativistic Doppler effect in quantum communication

When an electromagnetic signal propagates in vacuo, a polarization detector cannot be rigorously perpendicular to the wave vector because of diffraction effects. The vacuum behaves as a noisy channel, even if the detectors are perfect. The ``noise'' can however be reduced and nearly cancelled by a relative motion of the observer toward the source. The standard definition of a reduced density matrix fails for photon polarization, because the transversality condition behaves like a superselection rule. We can however define an effective reduced density matrix which corresponds to a restricted class of positive operator-valued measures. There are no pure photon qubits, and no exactly orthogonal qubit states.Comment: 10 pages LaTe