Estelle James Gary Ferrier James Smalhout Dimitri Vittas
Abstract
One of the biggest criticisms leveled at defined contribution individual account (IA) components of social security systems is that they are too expensive. This paper investigates the cost-effectiveness of three options for constructing funded social security pillars: 1) IA's invested in the retail market with relatively open choice, 2) IA's invested in the institutional market with constrained choice among investment companies, and 3) a centralized fund without individual accounts or differentiated investments across individuals. Our questions: What is the most cost-effective way to organize a mandatory IA system, how does the cost of an efficient IA system compare with that of a single centralized fund, and are the cost differentials large enough to outweigh the other important considerations? Our answers, based on empirical evidence about mutual and institutional funds in the U.S.: The retail market (option 1) allows individual investors to benefit from scale economies in asset management, but at the cost of high marketing expenses that are needed to attract and aggregate small sums of money into large pools. In contrast, a centralized fund (option 3) can be much cheaper because it achieves scale economies without high marketing costs, but gives workers no choice and hence is subject to political manipulation and misallocation of capital. Mandatory IA systems can be structured to get the best of both worlds: to obtain scale economies in asset management without incurring high marketing costs or sacrificing worker choice. To accomplish this requires centralized collections, a modest level of investor service and constrained choice. The system of constrained choice described in this paper (option 2) is much cheaper than the retail market and only slightly more expensive than a single centralized fund. We estimate that it will cost only .14-.18% of assets annually. These large administrative cost savings imply a Pareto improvement so long as choice is not constrained too much.'
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
7049.
Length: Date of creation: Mar 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7049
Note: PE AG Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Related research
Keywords:
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.:
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.)