The future of pension systems in europe: a reappraisal.

In this paper we examine and ultimately challenge the traditional viewpoint on the future of current pension systems in Europe, according to which the effects of the ageing bomb will inevitably bring down our unfunded PA YG public pension systems. First, we claim that the projected dramatic increase in the pension burden in mostly due to labour market problems and the generosity of the system, rather than to demographic factors. Secondly, we conclude that a fully funded system cannot be achieved without a substantial reduction in current pension payments unless it is financed by issuing earnmarked public debt. Finally we claim that a socially efficient pension system should be a mixed one, partly funded and partly PA VG, on the basis of optimal portfolio allocation in a context of uncertain returns to both human and physical capital and on the role ofPAYG for financing the accumulation of human capital.Pension systems; Funded and unfunded systems; Human and physical capital accumulation;

Market organization and propagation of shocks: the furniture industry in Germany and Italy

In this paper we study the furniture industry in two European countries, Germany and Italy. Although the two industries are characterized by very similar output and technology, they differ widely in terms of market organization, most notably the distribution of firms by size, and the organization of retail. We find some evidences that these differences have an influence on the dynamic behavior of industry output, prices and exports in the two countries

Regression with imputed covariates: a generalized missing indicator approach

International audienceA common problem in applied regression analysis is that covariate values may be missing for some observations but imputed values may be available. This situation generates a trade-off between bias and precision: the complete cases are often disarmingly few, but replacing the missing observations with the imputed values to gain precision may lead to bias. In this paper we formalize this trade-off by showing that one can augment the regression model with a set of auxiliary variables so as to obtain, under weak assumptions about the imputations, the same unbiased estimator of the parameters of interest as complete-case analysis. Given this augmented model, the bias-precision trade-off may then be tackled by either model reduction procedures or model averaging methods. We illustrate our approach by considering the problem of estimating the relation between income and the body mass index (BMI) using survey data affected by item non-response, where the missing values on the main covariates are filled in by imputations

Assessing alternative indicators for Covid-19 policy evaluation, with a counterfactual for Sweden

Using the synthetic control method, we construct counterfactuals for what would have happened if Sweden had imposed a lockdown during the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic. We consider eight different indicators, including a novel one that we construct by adjusting recorded daily COVID-19 deaths to account for weakly excess mortality. Correcting for data problems and re-optimizing the synthetic control for each indicator, we find that a lockdown would have had sizable effects within one week. The much longer delay estimated by two previous studies focusing on the number of positives cases is mainly driven by the extremely low testing frequency that prevailed in Sweden in the first months of the epidemic. This result appears relevant for choosing the timing of future lockdowns and highlights the importance of looking at several indicators to derive robust conclusions. We also find that our novel indicator is effective in correcting errors in the COVID-19 deaths series and that the quantitative effects of the lockdown are stronger than previously estimated