IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bru/bruppp/03-21.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is There A Pensions Crisis In The Uk?

Author

Listed:
  • E Philip Davis

Abstract

The UK pension system is traditionally seen as offering a good example to other countries, having features such as a low social security burden of the public sector as well as a high coverage of well-financed voluntary private schemes. But recent developments suggest that the model has shown weaknesses. The most pressing current issue is underfunding of defined benefit occupational schemes following the bear market; but there are also the ongoing crises of mis-selling of personal pensions and the failure of Equitable Life insurance company. In this paper we seek to investigate whether there is indeed a crisis and what the locus of the true crisis is. We find that there are important longer-term weaknesses of the UK system as well as these current difficulties, focusing on social security as well as private pensions. Pitfalls faced by UK policymakers offer important lessons to other countries seeking to set up or expand private pension provision.

Suggested Citation

  • E Philip Davis, 2003. "Is There A Pensions Crisis In The Uk?," Public Policy Discussion Papers 03-21, Economics and Finance Section, School of Social Sciences, Brunel University.
  • Handle: RePEc:bru:bruppp:03-21
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/329/efwps/03-21.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Miles, David, 1993. "Testing for Short Termisn in the UK Stock Market," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(421), pages 1379-1396, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michiel Bijlsma & Cora Zonderland & Machiel van Dijk & Marc Pomp, 2005. "Competition in markets for life insurance," CPB Document 96, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    2. Bill Martin, 2020. "Resurrecting the UK Corporate Sector Accounts," Working Papers wp519, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    3. Miguel Sanchez-Martinez & Philip Davis, 2014. "A review of the economic theories of poverty," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 435, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    4. Machiel van Dijk & Michiel Bijlsma & Marc Pomp, 2008. "The price of free advice," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(14), pages 1889-1903.
    5. Christine Lagoutte, 2006. "Financement des retraites par capitalisation et équilibre des systèmes financiers : le cas du Royaume-Uni," Revue d'Économie Financière, Programme National Persée, vol. 86(5), pages 331-362.
    6. Kaifala, Gabriel B. & Paisey, Catriona & Paisey, Nicholas J., 2021. "The UK pensions landscape – A critique of the role of accountants and accounting technologies in the treatment of social and societal risks," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    7. Guillen, Montserrat & Jorgensen, Peter Lochte & Nielsen, Jens Perch, 2006. "Return smoothing mechanisms in life and pension insurance: Path-dependent contingent claims," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 229-252, April.
    8. Davis, E. Philip & De Haan, Leo, 2012. "Pension fund finance and sponsoring companies," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(3), pages 439-463, July.
    9. Francesco Macheda, 2018. "The illusion of patient capital: evidence from pension investment policy in the Netherlands," Working Papers 0029, ASTRIL - Associazione Studi e Ricerche Interdisciplinari sul Lavoro.
    10. Michiel Bijlsma & Machiel van Dijk & Marc Pomp & Cora Zonderland, 2005. "Competition in markets for life insurance," CPB Document 96.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    11. Machiel van Dijk & Michiel Bijlsma & Marc Pomp, 2006. "The price of free advice," CPB Discussion Paper 66, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.

    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. Svensson, Lars E. O., 1997. "Inflation forecast targeting: Implementing and monitoring inflation targets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 1111-1146, June.
    2. Stephen Nickell & John Van Reenen, 2001. "Technological Innovation and Performance in the United Kingdom," CEP Discussion Papers dp0488, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    3. Marco Bianchi, 1995. "Testing for convergence: evidence from non-parametric multimodality tests," Bank of England working papers 36, Bank of England.
    4. Zoltán Schepp & József Ulbert & Ákos Tóth-Pajor, 2020. "The Effect of Investor Short-Termism on the Capital Demand of European Listed Firms," Financial and Economic Review, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary), vol. 19(2), pages 88-106.
    5. George Christodoulakis, 2012. "Conditions for rational investment short-termism," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 15-29, February.
    6. Segelod, Esbjorn, 2000. "A comparison of managers perceptions of short-termism in Sweden and the U.S," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 243-254, January.
    7. Dennis C. Mueller & Mark L. Sirower, 2003. "The causes of mergers: tests based on the gains to acquiring firms' shareholders and the size of premia," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(5), pages 373-391.
    8. Matthew B Canzoneri & Charles Nolan & Anthony Yates, 1996. "Feasible Mechanisms for Achieving Monetary Stability: a Comparison of Inflation Targeting and the ERM," Bank of England working papers 52, Bank of England.
    9. Grant, S. & Quiggin, J., 2001. "The Risk Premium for Equity : Explanations and Implications," Other publications TiSEM a005f0a9-58af-4a64-b306-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    10. Gunther Tichy, 2002. "Informationsgesellschaft und flexiblere Arbeitsmärkte [Information society and flexible labour markets]," ITA manu:scripts 02_03, Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA).
    11. Beetsma, Roel & Peters, Hans & Rebers, Eugene, 2000. "When to fire bad managers: the role of collusion between management and board of directors," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 427-444, August.
    12. Clive Briault & Andrew Haldane & Mervyn A. King, 1997. "Independence and Accountability," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Iwao Kuroda (ed.), Towards More Effective Monetary Policy, chapter 10, pages 299-340, Palgrave Macmillan.
    13. Colin Ellis, 2014. "Break-even maturity as a guide to financial distress," Contemporary Economics, University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw., vol. 8(4), December.
    14. Jesse Edgerton & Naomi E. Feldman & Laura Kawano & Elena Patel & Nirupama Rao & Michael Stevens, 2018. "The Long and Short of It : Do Public and Private Firms Invest Differently?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2018-068, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    15. Marco Bianchi & Gylfi Zoega, 1998. "Unemployment persistence: does the size of the shock matter?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(3), pages 283-304.
    16. Grant, Simon & Quiggin, John, 2003. "The Risk Premium for Equity: Implicatiosn for Resource Allocation, Welfare adn Policy," Working Papers 2003-14, Rice University, Department of Economics.
    17. MacDonald, Ronald & Power, David, 1995. "Stock prices, dividends and retention: Long-run relationships and short-run dynamics," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 135-151, June.
    18. Sterne, Gabriel & Bayoumi, Tamim, 1995. "Temporary Cycles or Volatile Trends? Economic Fluctuations in 21 OECD Economies," The Manchester School of Economic & Social Studies, University of Manchester, vol. 63(1), pages 23-51, March.
    19. Slack, Richard & Tsalavoutas, Ioannis, 2018. "Integrated reporting decision usefulness: Mainstream equity market views," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 184-198.
    20. Andrew G Haldane, 1995. "Rules, Discretion and the United Kingdom's New Monetary Framework," Bank of England working papers 40, Bank of England.

    More about this item

    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:bru:bruppp:03-21. 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: John.Hunter (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.