Product Description: By comparing Germany, France, the UK and the USA this study explores how governments have tackled the increased pressure of financing state pensions. Specifically, it looks at the approach of each of these countries to raising the age of entitlement in order to understand the ways in which this policy was introduced in different countries...read more

Product Description: Examines the interaction of social security and pensions in several nations.

Product Description: The financial and economic crisis of 2007 to the present led to the failure of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and downturns in stock markets around the world. The crisis meant the failure of key businesses, the decline of consumer wealth, and the birth of substantial financial commitments by governments...read more

Product Description: Turner identifies the current problems facing pension policy for U.S. employer-provided pension plans and recommends solutions to those problems based on his examination of pension systems in other industrialized nations.

Product Description: To what extent do international organizations, global policy networks, and transnational policy entrepreneurs influence domestic policy makers? Have we entered a new phase of globalization that, unbeknownst to most citizens, shapes policies that used to be the sole domain of domestic politics? Privatizing Pensions reveals how international institutions--such as the World Bank, USAID, and other transnational policy actors--have played a seminal role in the development, diffusion, and implementation of new pension reforms that are transforming the postwar social contract in more than thirty countries worldwide, including the United States...read more

Product Description: The world is getting older and no one knows exactly what life will be like in tomorrow's older societies. But we do know that age dependency ratios--the ratio of retirees to workers--will be much higher than we see today. The combined effects of fewer workers, more retirees and longer retirement periods threaten not only the sustainability of pension systems but also the broader economic prospects of many developed countries...read more

This book contains material that I have presented in seminars at the Universities of Bochum, Mannheim, Munich, Salerno, and Southern California at Los Angeles, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, the Max-Planck-Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, and on various international meetings and conferences. In preparing and revising the material I have benefited from comments, discussions, and advice from several colleagues. I had particularly close and friendly collaboration with Alexander Kemnitz and Robert von Weizsicker to whom I am very grateful. I am also grateful to Michele Boldrin, Axel Borsch-Supan, Friedrich Breyer, Karen Feist, Tullio Jappelli, Leo Kaas, Marco Pagano, Gerhard Schwooiauer, Carl Christian von Weizsacker, and Wolfgang Wiegard for their comments and suggestions. Finally, I would like to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for financial support. Mannheim, January 2002 Berthold U. Wigger Contents 1. Introduction ...1 2. Public Pensions and Economic Growth: The Basic Framework . . 5 2. 1. The Analytical Elements 7 2. 1. 1. The Individuals 7 2. 1. 2. The Firms 10 2. 1. 3. The Public Pension Program 11 2. 1. 4. The Competitive Equilibrium 12 2. 2. Productivity Growth 13 2. 3. Allocative Efficiency 19 2. 4. Public Pension Reform 25 Appendix 2 ...30 3. The Allocative Role of Intergenerational Transfers in Endogenous Growth Economies 33 3. 1. Investment Externalities, Intergenerational Transfers, and Pareto-improvements ...35 Contents x 3. 1. 1. A Subsidy to Private Savings 35 3. 1. 2. A Pareto-Improving Policy 38 3. 2. (view table of contents)