A Matter of Trust: Understanding Worldwide Public Pension Conversions
Kent Smetters (smetters@wharton.upenn.edu) and
Walter E. Theseira
No 17015, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Abstract:
This paper seeks to explain the key two stylized facts of fundamental reforms to social security systems worldwide: Why have so many countries reformed when traditional systems seem, at first glance, to have a higher probability of delivering a secure retirement income? Why have these reforms been larger in developing countries facing less severe demographic problems? We show that an OLG voter model can answer both questions. Larger reforms are motivated by a fundamental breakdown in intergenerational trust while smaller reforms are caused by a lack of trust in the ability of the government to save. Empirical analysis seems to support the model.
JEL-codes: H0 H55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age
Note: AG PE POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17015.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
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:nbr:nberwo:17015
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17015
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).