IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pad/wpaper/0139.html

Severance Pay or Pension Funds?

Author

Listed:
  • Devis Geron

    (University of Padova)

Abstract

The paper aims to analyze the determinants of the individual choice of con- tributing to pension funds, particularly by focusing on individual preferences towards the annuitization of the accumulated pension capital. The analysis is performed in the light of the latest reform of social security in Italy, convert- ing the severance pay scheme (the so-called TFR) into a fully funded scheme of pension funds. The model describes the behavior of a representative agent belonging to a representative generation in steady state, in a partial equilibrium setting with mortality risk as well as uncertainty on wages and financial market returns. Investing in riskier but potentially more rewarding pension funds, paying out annuities from retirement onwards, turns out to be slightly welfare improving with respect to contributing to a severance pay scheme eventually paying out a lump-sum amount. Nonetheless, the welfare-based value of insurance provided by private annuities from pension funds is relatively low, mainly due to a) the pre-existence of (sizeable) public annuities, and b) constraints imposed by annuitization on both saving and consumption behavior after retirement. These findings provide further insights into the Òannuity puzzleÓ issue.

Suggested Citation

  • Devis Geron, 2011. "Severance Pay or Pension Funds?," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0139, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    • Handle: RePEc:pad:wpaper:0139
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economia.unipd.it/sites/economia.unipd.it/files/20110139.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Erich Battistin & Agar Brugiavini & Enrico Rettore & Guglielmo Weber, 2009. "The Retirement Consumption Puzzle: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2209-2226, December.
    2. Riccardo Cesari & Giuseppe Grandi & Fabio Panetta, 2008. "Supplementary Pension Schemes in Italy: Features,Development and Opportunities for Workers," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 67(1), pages 21-73, March.
    3. Tauchen, George, 1986. "Finite state markov-chain approximations to univariate and vector autoregressions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 177-181.
    4. Raffaele Miniaci & Chiara Monfardini & Guglielmo Weber, 2010. "How does consumption change upon retirement?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 257-280, April.
    5. Jeffrey R. Brown & Mark J. Warshawsky, 2001. "Longevity-Insured Retirement Distributions from Pension Plans: Market and Regulatory Issues," NBER Working Papers 8064, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Alfonso Rosolia & Roberto Torrini, 2007. "The generation gap: relative earnings of young and old workers in Italy," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 639, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    7. Luigi Ventura, 2003. "Direct Measures of Time Preference," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 34(3), pages 293-310.
    8. Giovanni Guazzarotti & Pietro Tommasino, 2008. "The Annuity Market in an Evolving Pension System: Lessons from Italy," CeRP Working Papers 77, Center for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies, Turin (Italy).
    9. Butler, Monika & Teppa, Federica, 2007. "The choice between an annuity and a lump sum: Results from Swiss pension funds," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(10), pages 1944-1966, November.
    10. Benjamin M. Friedman & Mark Warshawsky, 1985. "The Cost of Annuities: Implications for Saving Behavior and Bequests," NBER Working Papers 1682, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Raquel Fonseca & Thepthida Sopraseuth, 2005. "Welfare Effects of Social Security Reforms Across Europe : the Case of France and Italy," CSEF Working Papers 138, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    12. Saul Pleeter & John T. Warner, 2001. "The Personal Discount Rate: Evidence from Military Downsizing Programs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 33-53, March.
    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. Devis Geron, 2009. "Social Security Incidence under Uncertainty Assessing Italian Reforms," CESifo Working Paper Series 2812, CESifo.
    2. Allais, Olivier & Leroy, Pascal & Mink, Julia, 2020. "Changes in food purchases at retirement in France," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    3. Marini, Andrea, 2024. "Updating the retirement-consumption puzzle in Italy: who are the most affected?," Working Paper Series 2936, European Central Bank.
    4. Bronshtein, Gila & Scott, Jason & Shoven, John B. & Slavov, Sita Nataraj, 2020. "Leaving big money on the table: Arbitrage opportunities in delaying social security," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 261-272.
    5. Johannes Hagen, 2015. "The determinants of annuitization: evidence from Sweden," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 22(4), pages 549-578, August.
    6. Milevsky, Moshe A. & Young, Virginia R., 2008. "Erratum to: "Annuitization and asset allocation": [Journal of Economic Dynamics & Control 31 (9) (2007) 3138-3177]," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(11), pages 3743-3744, November.
    7. Svetlana Pashchenko & Ponpoje Porapakkarm, 2024. "Accounting For Social Security Claiming Behavior," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 65(1), pages 505-545, February.
    8. Zhu, Penghu & Lin, Boqiang, 2022. "Do the elderly consume more energy? Evidence from the retirement policy in urban China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    9. Estelle James & Guillermo Martinez & Augusto Iglesias, 2005. "The Payout Stage in Chile: Who Annuitizes and Why?," Working Papers 14, Superintendencia de Pensiones, revised May 2007.
    10. Jeffrey R. Brown & Jeffrey R. Kling & Sendhil Mullainathan & Marian V. Wrobel, 2013. "Framing Lifetime Income," NBER Working Papers 19063, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Jingjing Chai & Raimond Maurer & Olivia S. Mitchell & Ralph Rogalla, 2012. "Exchanging Delayed Social Security Benefits for Lump Sums: Could This Incentivize Longer Work Careers?," Working Papers wp266, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    12. Daniel Burkhard, 2015. "Consumption smoothing at retirement: average and quantile treatment effects in the regression discontinuity design," Diskussionsschriften dp1512, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    13. Matteo Iacoviello, 2008. "Household Debt and Income Inequality, 1963–2003," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(5), pages 929-965, August.
    14. Ludmila Nivorozhkina & Anton Nivorozhkin & Kamilla Abazieva, 2010. "Drop in consumption associated with retirement. The regression discontinuity design approach," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 19(3), pages 112-126.
    15. Renata Bottazzi & Tullio Jappelli & Mario Padula, 2009. "The Portfolio Effect of Pension Reforms," Working Papers 2009_17, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    16. Jim Been & Susann Rohwedder & Michael Hurd, 2021. "Households’ joint consumption spending and home production responses to retirement in the US," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 959-985, December.
    17. Francesca Carta & Domenico Depalo, 2025. "Country demographic and socio-economic structure and household consumption," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 920, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    18. Rønnow, Helene Normann & Smed, Sinne & Tetens, Inge, 2024. "The (dynamic) effect of retirement on food purchases," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 27(C).
    19. Tian, Geran & Jin, Changlun & Wu, Weixing, 2024. "Too old to spend? Understanding the consumption of the elderly in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    20. Beshears, John & Choi, James J. & Laibson, David & Madrian, Brigitte C. & Zeldes, Stephen P., 2014. "What makes annuitization more appealing?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 2-16.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pad:wpaper:0139. 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: Raffaele Dei Campielisi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dspadit.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.