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This paper stems from the observation that there are two worldwide trends, pension reform and population ageing, and asks whether the two may be related. Exploring the cases of pension reform in different countries, we find that, although they are very different, the cases share a common characteristic: they shift risks away from workers towards those who are retired. Furthermore, population ageing, by increasing the weight of the elderly relative to working generations, raises the price of intergenerational risk sharing. Combining these findings, we argue and show formally that pension reform can be seen as a welfare-best response to population ageing.

This paper shows that in a two-country two-overlapping-generations model with migration, capital mobility and an immobile production factor (land), a locally welfare-improving pension reform at the cost of the neighboring country is possible if land plays a minor role in production. Furthermore, differences in the size of the PAYG pension schemes between the countries distort the international allocation of labour and capital. As a result, a Pareto-improving pension reform is possible if countries employ PAYG pension schemes of different size, provided that a federal government exists that redistributes benefits and losses of the reform both intergenerationally and internationally.

This paper studies the redistribution and welfare effects of increasing the flexibility of individual pension take-up. We use an overlapping-generations model with Beveridgean pay-as-you-go pensions and heterogeneous individuals who differ in ability and lifespan. We find that introducing flexible pension take-up can induce a Pareto improvement when the initial pension scheme contains within-cohort redistribution and induces early retirement. Such a Pareto improving reform entails the application of uniform actuarial adjustment of pension entitlements based on average lifespan. Introducing actuarial non-neutrality that stimulates later retirement further improves such a flexibility reform.

Many European Union states have adjusted pension benefits or reformed the pension system in reaction to the recent economic crisis, while other member states have postponed this type of adjustments. In this paper we study to what extent countries that responded quickly to the crisis are harmed by the lingering in other member states via international spillover effects caused by factor mobility and trade. We show that this depends crucially on the degree of labour mobility in the short run. In fact, countries with more flexible pensions can benefit from the inflexibility of pensions in other countries if they can temporarily limit immigration.

Retirement flexibility is often seen as a hedge against macroeconomic risks such as capital market risks, which justifies more risky asset portfolios. This paper analyses the robustness of this claim in both a partial equilibrium and general equilibrium setting. We show that this positive relationship between risk taking and retirement flexibility is weakened and under some conditions even turned around if not only capital market risks, but also productivity risks are considered. Productivity risk in combination with a high elasticity of substitution between consumption and leisure creates a positive correlation between asset returns and labour income, reducing the willingness of consumers to bear risk.

This paper analyses the consequences of a switch to a more funded pension scheme for economic growth in an economy that consists of a capital-intensive commodity sector with endogenous growth and a labourintensive services sector. The increased savings cause long-run growth to be higher in a closed economy, provided capital and labour are not strong substitutes. The reverse holds for a small open economy. More funding can therefore turn out to be a curse instead of a blessing for future generations, unless countries implement their reforms simultaneously or impose a tax on labour-intensive services.

The central question of this paper is how international trade and specialization are affected by different designs of pension schemes and asymmetric demographic changes. In a model with two goods, two countries and two production factors, we find that countries with a relatively large unfunded pension scheme will specialize in the production of labour intensive goods. If these countries are hit by a negative demographic shock, this specialization will intensify in the long run. Eventually, these countries may even completely specialize in the production of those goods. The effects spill over to other countries, which will move away from complete specialization in capital intensive goods as the relative size of their labour intensive goods sector will also increase.

This paper analyses the relation between public pensions, fertility and child care in a closed-economy overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility. It is shown that raising a child involves two social externalities and that it is optimal to introduce child allowances if the government redistributes income from the young to the old. The optimal child allowance rises when longevity increases. If the costs of raising children depend positively on the wage, a third externality arises and the returns to savings should be taxed.

Trade in goods that are not perfect substitutes can considerably change the predictions of standard neoclassical models about the effects of demographic developments. This paper considers a relative decrease in the population size of one country, when countries specialize in the production of different intermediate goods. The degree of substitutability is crucial for the direction of capital flows between the countries and for the development of wages. The less those goods are substitutes, the stronger the long-run international spillover effects of a demographic shock will be. For the interest rate effects, also international differences in saving rates due to e.g., different pension schemes have to be taken into account.

In this paper we analyze the bureaucratic negotiation process that is implied by the budgeting system applied in Dutch hospital care. This system is based on centralized price setting while simultaneously allowing for decentralized negotiations on volumes. We apply a variant of the bureaucracy theory, according to which the bureaucratic agency (in our case the joint hospitals) are not allowed to price discriminate, but will receive a flat price per unit of output. We find that central price setting, where the insurer cannot exploit its information on hospital costs, leads to a suboptimal supply of hospital care.