The review in this paper yields four specific policy implications for firms currently providing pension products, and provides suggestions to improve risk measurement and debiasing strategies in pension product advice. This panel paper addresses the issue of how best to measure and debias consumer risk attitudes in the domain of pension product decisions.

Neste møte i Pensjonsforum holdes 31.august. Denne gangen kommer Ingemar Eriksson for å presentere den svenske utredningen «Längre liv, längre arbetsliv. Förutsättningar och hinder för äldre att arbeta längre, SOU 2012:28».

As interest in proposals to restore Social Security solvency rises, it’s timely to examine whether current policy analyses provide adequate information on important distributional questions. This project explores measures of changes in Social Security benefits’ adequacy, horizontal equity, and efficiency under different proposals. We apply the measures to simulation output from the Urban Institute’s Dynamic Simulation of Income Model under the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform Social Security proposal. A series of exhibits illustrates how they work and could inform policymakers about the relative merits of varied options to restore the program’s long-run solvency and meet other objectives.

The Dutch occupational pension system has been successful in securing high asset accumulation to fund generous pension promises. However, for the second time in this decade the pension system has been affected by a financial crisis and many pension funds’ assets fell below levels needed to meet regulatory requirements. Insufficient funding raises solvency issues, which could eventually lead to large fiscal costs in case of bail-outs.

Occupational pension funds operate along a simple mechanism: Contributions are being paid into the fund, which are subsequently invested on the capital markets, and finally paid out in the form of pension benefits. But as the operational variables implied in this process are uncertain, this mechanism is inescapably embedded in risk. Investment returns are uncertain, and this holds true for mortality or salary trends as well. Pension funds are inevitably active risk takers.

Economic theory suggests that individual decisions about consumption, saving, and labor supply should be directly linked to subjective expectations about future events. This project uses panel data from the Health and Retirement Study from 1994-2008 merged to data on a number of local and high frequency macroeconomic indicators to estimate how individual expectations respond to fluctuations in the local and national macroeconomy. Our results suggest that individuals revise their expectations in response to both local and national macroeconomic fluctuations in ways that appear to make sense, and that this is stronger for respondents with higher levels of education.

The Dutch occupational pension system has been successful in securing high asset accumulation to fund generous pension promises. However, for the second time in this decade the pension system has been affected by a financial crisis and many pension funds’ assets fell below levels needed to meet regulatory requirements. Insufficient funding raises solvency issues, which could eventually lead to large fiscal costs in case of bail-outs.

Axel West Pedersen har gått igjennom hovedelementene i pensjonsreformen for å vurdere hvilke konsekvenser den kan forventes å få for sysselsettingen i Norge.

Statistikken for første halvår i 2008 viser en jevn økning i mottakere av AFP. Samtidig ser man en økning av nye mottakere som fortsetter i arbeid for begge kjønn både i det offentlige og det private. NAVs analyser viser at mer enn hver fjerde mottaker av AFP tar ut gradert pensjon.