IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/15805.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal retirement benefit guarantees

Author

Listed:
  • Stavros Panageas

Abstract

Retirement benefit guarantees can ensure a minimum standard of living in retirement. I propose a framework to discuss the design of such guarantees. The model features a standard life-cycle setting, in which individual agents' choices can have negative external effects on public finances, whenever their retirement consumption drops below a minimum level. Within this framework, I derive two alternative forms of intervention that can efficiently deliver a minimum standard of living to retirees. According to the first policy, agents use part of their accumulated assets to purchase a claim providing a fixed income stream for the duration of their life. According to the second policy, they purchase an appropriately structured portfolio insurance policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Stavros Panageas, 2010. "Optimal retirement benefit guarantees," NBER Working Papers 15805, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15805
    Note: AG AP PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15805.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Basak, Suleyman & Cuoco, Domenico, 1998. "An Equilibrium Model with Restricted Stock Market Participation," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(2), pages 309-341.
    2. Barro, Robert J, 1974. "Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1095-1117, Nov.-Dec..
    3. Albert Marcet & Ramon Marimon, 2019. "Recursive Contracts," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(5), pages 1589-1631, September.
    4. Andrew G. Biggs, 2011. "Social Security: The Story of Its Past and a Vision for Its Future," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 6033, September.
    5. Bodie, Zvi & Merton, Robert C. & Samuelson, William F., 1992. "Labor supply flexibility and portfolio choice in a life cycle model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 16(3-4), pages 427-449.
    6. Laurence Ball & N. Gregory Mankiw, 2007. "Intergenerational Risk Sharing in the Spirit of Arrow, Debreu, and Rawls, with Applications to Social Security Design," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(4), pages 523-547, August.
    7. He, Hua & Pages, Henri F, 1993. "Labor Income, Borrowing Constraints, and Equilibrium Asset Prices," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 3(4), pages 663-696, October.
    8. Martin Feldstein & Elena Ranguelova, 2001. "Individual Risk in an Investment-Based Social Security System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1116-1125, September.
    9. Dirk Krueger & Felix Kubler, 2006. "Pareto-Improving Social Security Reform when Financial Markets are Incomplete!?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 737-755, June.
    10. Martin Feldstein, 2009. "Reducing the Risk of Investment-Based Social Security Reform," NBER Chapters, in: Social Security Policy in a Changing Environment, pages 201-218, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Harold L. Cole & Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 2001. "Efficient Allocations with Hidden Income and Hidden Storage," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(3), pages 523-542.
    12. G. M. Constantinides & J. B. Donaldson & R. Mehra, 2005. "Junior must pay: pricing the implicit put in privatizing Social Security," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 1-34, January.
    13. Mikhail Golosov & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2006. "Designing Optimal Disability Insurance: A Case for Asset Testing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(2), pages 257-279, April.
    14. Barro, Robert J, 1979. "On the Determination of the Public Debt," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 940-971, October.
    15. Farhi, Emmanuel & Panageas, Stavros, 2007. "Saving and investing for early retirement: A theoretical analysis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 87-121, January.
    16. John Y. Campbell & Martin Feldstein, 2001. "Risk Aspects of Investment-Based Social Security Reform," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number camp01-1, March.
    17. Cuoco, Domenico, 1997. "Optimal Consumption and Equilibrium Prices with Portfolio Constraints and Stochastic Income," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 33-73, January.
    18. Martin Feldstein, 2005. "Rethinking Social Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 1-24, March.
    19. John Y. Campbell & Martin Feldstein, 2001. "Introduction to "Risk Aspects of Investment-Based Social Security Reform"," NBER Chapters, in: Risk Aspects of Investment-Based Social Security Reform, pages 1-10, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Michael Gallmeyer & Burton Hollifield, 2008. "An Examination of Heterogeneous Beliefs with a Short-Sale Constraint in a Dynamic Economy," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 12(2), pages 323-364.
    21. Blanchard, Olivier J, 1985. "Debt, Deficits, and Finite Horizons," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(2), pages 223-247, April.
    22. Marie-Eve Lachance & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2003. "Guaranteeing Individual Accounts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 257-260, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stavros Panageas, 2007. "Optimal Retirement Benefit Guarantees," 2007 Meeting Papers 172, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Mehlkopf, R.J., 2011. "Risk sharing with the unborn," Other publications TiSEM fe8a8df6-455f-4624-af10-9, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Stéphane Guibaud & Yves Nosbusch & Dimitri Vayanos, 2013. "Bond Market Clienteles, the Yield Curve, and the Optimal Maturity Structure of Government Debt," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(8), pages 1914-1961.
    4. Stavros Panageas, 2020. "The Implications of Heterogeneity and Inequality for Asset Pricing," NBER Working Papers 26974, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Campbell, John Y. & Nosbusch, Yves, 2007. "Intergenerational risksharing and equilibrium asset prices," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2251-2268, November.
    6. Jeon, Junkee & Park, Kyunghyun, 2023. "Optimal job switching and retirement decision," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 443(C).
    7. Beetsma, R. & Romp, W., 2016. "Intergenerational Risk Sharing," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 311-380, Elsevier.
    8. Fabio C. Bagliano & Carolina Fugazza & Giovanna Nicodano, 2017. "A Life-Cycle Model with Unemployment Traps," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 514, Collegio Carlo Alberto, revised 2019.
    9. Bossi, Luca, 2008. "Intergenerational risk shifting through social security and bailout politics," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 2240-2268, July.
    10. Wei-Ting Pan, 2016. "The Impact of Mandatory Savings on Life Cycle Consumption and Portfolio Choice," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 2-2016.
    11. Wei-Ting Pan, 2016. "The Impact of Mandatory Savings on Life Cycle Consumption and Portfolio Choice," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 32, July-Dece.
    12. 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.
    13. Elmendorf, Douglas W. & Gregory Mankiw, N., 1999. "Government debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1615-1669, Elsevier.
    14. Chabakauri, Georgy, 2010. "Asset pricing with heterogeneous investors and portfolio constraints," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 43142, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Bagliano, Fabio C. & Fugazza, Carolina & Nicodano, Giovanna, 2019. "Life-cycle portfolios, unemployment and human capital loss," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 325-340.
    16. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3221 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Fabio C. Bagliano & Carolina Fugazza & Giovanna Nicodano, 2014. "Optimal Life-Cycle Portfolios for Heterogeneous Workers," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 18(6), pages 2283-2323.
    18. Schwartz, Eduardo S & Tebaldi, Claudio, 2004. "Illiquid Assets and Optimal Portfolio Choice," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt7q65t12x, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    19. Leopold Diebalek & Doris Prammer, 2006. "Reform of the Stability and Growth Pact," Monetary Policy & the Economy, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue 1, pages 78-109.
    20. Jérôme Creel, 2002. "Strategic interactions between monetary and fiscal policies: a case study for the European Stability Pact," Sciences Po publications info:hdl:2441/3221, Sciences Po.
    21. John Y. Campbell & João F. Cocco, 2003. "Household Risk Management and Optimal Mortgage Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(4), pages 1449-1494.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15805. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.