The strengths and failures of incentive mechanisms in notional defined contribution pension systems

A. Marano, Carlo Mazzaferro and Marcello Morciano

Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna

Abstract: Public pension systems based on the Notional Defined Contribution (NDC) principle were introduced during the 90s in Italy, Sweden and Poland, among other countries. They mimic private savings, in that individuals get back, as pensioners, what they contributed to social security during working life, plus returns. As such, NDC systems should realize actuarial equity and incentive neutrality. However, when one considers the presence of NDC pensions together with minimum and social assistance pensions, this is no longer true. Indeed, in all the three countries considered, the NDC system shows a regressive feature, which disincentivizes contributions, particularly from low earners, who would be better off entering, or staying in, the shadow economy. In order to reduce the extent of this phenomenon, we examine the effects of introducing, or increasing, the possibility of accumulation of social assistance and NDC pensions, which would also improve pension adequacy. A complete accumulation of the two would solve the incentive problem, but would be costly and would require a structural reform of the pension system financing mechanism, altering the current balance between social contributions and general fiscal revenues. We show the effects of a change in the cumulation rules for social assistance and NDC pensions in Italy using CAPP_DYN, a population-based dynamic microsimulation model, which allows assessment of the evolution of the pension system in the coming decades and the distributional implications of such reform.

JEL-codes: C51 H55 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-cmp and nep-iue
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://amsacta.unibo.it/4439/1/WP799.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The strengths and failures of incentive mechanisms in notional defined contribution pension systems (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp799

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna ().