Italia. Da lavoratori a pensionati poveri. Le misure previdenziali di protezione

Nel nostro contributo intendiamo ricostruire il quadro normativo degli interventi rivolti al sostegno dei pensionati poveri, fornire degli elementi di analisi capaci di identificare la tipologia dei pensionati poveri futuri, avanzare delle proposte di riforma degli interventi assistenziali destinati ai pensionati futuri, cioè a quelli totalmente contributivi. Dalla nostra analisi emerge che le situazioni di sofferenza e deprivazione economica saranno concentrate tra i lavoratori che avranno accumulato a settanta anni una anzianità contributiva minore di trenta anni. Gli interventi assistenziali potrebbero essere utilmente riformati estendendo l’istituto della contribuzione figurativa a tutti i lavoratori nei periodi di disoccupazione. Inoltre, potrebbe essere recuperato il principio di valorizzazione dei contributi versati. Quel principio, infatti, è stato completamente annullato per i pensionati poveri in seguito al sovrapporsi negli anni di interventi di natura molto diversa

Political support to public debt repudiation in a Monetary Union: the role of the geographical allocation of debt

This paper proposes a stylized two-period two-country OLG model illustrating the potential role played by the nationality of investors on the incentives for a government to renege on its domestic debt. The two countries belong to a Monetary Union where monetary policy is decided by the Union’s Central Bank, while fiscal policy is set by each national government. In the first period, governments issue debt which is acquired both by resident and non resident families. In the second period, public debt must be paid back. Since debt is issued internally, discriminatory taxation against foreign investors is not available. The government can thus choose to repay the debt by levying a tax on resident families’ labour income, or to repudiate it. The repayment scheme is the outcome of the interaction between the government and interest groups (identified by resident and non resident families) with conflicting preferences about debt redemption. Families exert their influence on government decisions by proposing a contribution function contingent on policy outcomes. The main result produced by our model is that if a sufficient share of debt is owned abroad, then incentives to default on domestic debt increase irrespective of the stock of public debt. The main implication of this result is that for a given level of domestic debt, diversification, increasing the share of domestic debt held by foreigners, raises countries’ default risk. This is of some relevance for the EMU where a progressive greater integration of the market for sovereign issuances has been observed

Bribery and public debt repudiation

In cases where policy makers accept "bribes" offered by organised lobbies or interested parties, government decisions can be modelled as a first price menu auction. In this paper we adapt this structure to model debt repudiation. We consider a one-period model in which two generations, parents and children, are present, and debt titles are unevenly distributed among parents. The government can repay the debt by a combination of taxes on the children's income and on the outstanding debt. We exclude intergenerational conflicts, assuming that the parents' and children's objective is to maximise the utility of the family. In this perspective, families make offers that relate monetary contributions to the tax structures chosen by the government. On the hypothesis that all interests are represented, we obtain the result that the government is indifferent to the tax structure