IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

Intergenerational Risk Sharing, Stability and Optimality of Alternative Pension Systems

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Hassler, John

    ()

    (The Institute for International Economic Studies)

  • Lindbeck, Assar

    ()

    (Th Institute for International Economic Studies and The Research Institute of Industrial Economics)

Abstract

In an analysis of the risk-sharing properties of different types of pension systems, we show that only a fixed-fee pay-as-you go (PAYG) pension systems can provide intergenerational risk sharing for living individuals. Under some circumstances, however, other PAYG pension systems can enhance the expected welfare of all generations by reducing intergenerational income variability. We derive conditions for this to occur. We also analyze the stability of actuarially fair PAYG pension systems. It is shown that if an actuarially fair pension with a non-balanced budget system is dynamically stable, its accumulated surpluses will converge to the same fund as in a fully funded system. We also show that the welfare loss due to labor market distortions will, surprisingly, increase if the implicit marginal return in a compulsory system is raised above the average return.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.

File URL: http://swopec.hhs.se/iuiwop/papers/iuiwop0493.pdf.zip
Download Restriction: no
File URL: http://swopec.hhs.se/iuiwop/papers/iuiwop0493.pdf
Download Restriction: no
File URL: http://swopec.hhs.se/iuiwop/papers/iuiwop0493.ps.zip
Download Restriction: no
File URL: http://swopec.hhs.se/iuiwop/papers/iuiwop0493.ps
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Research Institute of Industrial Economics in its series Working Paper Series with number 493.

as
in new window

Length: 36 pages
Date of creation: 12 Dec 1997
Handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0493
Contact details of provider: Postal:
Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Box 55665, SE-102 15 Stockholm, Sweden

Phone: +46 8 665 4500
Fax: +46 8 665 4599
Web page: http://www.ifn.se/
Email:


More information through EDIRC

Keywords: Pension systems; Pay-as-you-go; Intergenerational;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General
  • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
  • H60 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - General

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

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.:

as
in new window


  1. Feldstein, Martin, 1996. "The Missing Piece in Policy Analysis: Social Security Reform," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(2), pages 1-14, May.
  2. Hassler, John & Lindbeck, Assar, 1997. "Optimal actuarial fairness in pension systems: A note," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 251-255, August.
  3. 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..
  4. Enders, Walter & Lapan, Harvey E, 1982. "Social Security Taxation and Intergenerational Risk Sharing," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 23(3), pages 647-658, October.
  5. Blanchard Olivier & Weil Philippe, 2001. "Dynamic Efficiency, the Riskless Rate, and Debt Ponzi Games under Uncertainty," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 1(2), pages 1-23, November.
  6. Paul A. Samuelson, 1958. "An Exact Consumption-Loan Model of Interest with or without the Social Contrivance of Money," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66, pages 467-467.
  7. Attanasio, Orazio & Davis, Steven J, 1996. "Relative Wage Movements and the Distribution of Consumption," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(6), pages 1227-1262, December.
  8. Gordon, Roger H. & Varian, Hal R., 1988. "Intergenerational risk sharing," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 185-202, November.
  9. Smith, Alasdair, 1982. "Intergenerational transfers as social insurance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 97-106, October.
  10. Zilcha, Itzhak, 1991. "Characterizing efficiency in stochastic overlapping generations models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 1-16, October.
  11. Bohn, Henning, 1995. "The Sustainability of Budget Deficits in a Stochastic Economy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(1), pages 257-271, February.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as
in new window


Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:0493. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Elisabeth Gustafsson)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.