This paper discusses the consequences of population aging and a fundamental pension reform – that is, a shift towards more pre-funding – for capital markets in Germany. We use a stylized closed-economy, overlapping-generations model to compare the effects of the recent German pension reform with those of a more decisive reform that would freeze the current pay-as-you-go contribution rate and thus result in a larger funded component of the pension system. We predict rates of return to capital under both reform scenarios over a long horizon, taking demographic projections as given. Our main finding is that the future decrease in the rate of return is much smaller than often claimed in the public debate. Our simulations show that the capital stock will decrease once the baby boom generations enter retirement even if there were no fundamental pension reform. The corresponding decrease in the rate of return, the direct effect of population aging, is around 0.7 percentage points. While the capital market effects of the recent German pension reform are marginal, the rate of return to capital would decrease by an additional 0.5 percentage points under the more decisive reform proposal.
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Paper provided by Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging (MEA), University of Mannheim in its series MEA discussion paper series with number
02023.
Length: Date of creation: 01 May 2002 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:mea:meawpa:02023
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E27 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Forecasting and Simulation H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends and Forecasts
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Börsch-Supan, Axel & Reil-Held, Anette & Rodepeter, Ralf & Schnabel, Reinhold & Winter, Joachim, 2000.
"The German Savings Puzzle,"
Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications
01-07, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim & Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
[Downloadable!]
Other versions:
Borsch-Supan, Axel & Reil-Held, Anette & Rodepeter, Ralf & Schnabel, Reinhold & Winter, Joachim, 2001.
"The German Savings Puzzle,"
Research in Economics,
Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 15-38, March.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Martin Feldstein & Jeffrey B. Liebman, 2001.
"Social Security,"
NBER Working Papers
8451, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Feldstein, Martin & Liebman, Jeffrey B., 2002.
"Social security,"
Handbook of Public Economics,
in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 32, pages 2245-2324
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.