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Dividing the Spoils: Pensions, Privatization, and Reform in Russia's Transition

Autor: Kapstein, Ethan B.; Milanovic, Branko
Año: 2000
Resumen: Resumen: The authors present a political economy model in which policy is the outcome of an interaction between three actors: government (G), managers and workers (W), and transfer recipients (P). The government's objective is to stay in power, for which it needs the support of either P or W. It can choose slow privatization with little asset stripping and significant taxation, thus protecting the fiscal base out of which it pays pensioners relatively well (as in Poland). Or it can give away assets and tax exemptions to managers and workers, who then bankroll it and deliver the vote, but it thereby loses taxes and pays little to pensioners (as in Russia). The authors apply this model to Russia for the period 1992-96. An empirical analysis of electoral behavior in the 1996 presidential election shows that the likelihood of someone voting for Yeltsin did not depend on that person's socioeconomic group per se. Those who tended to vote for Yeltsin were richer, younger, and better educated and had more favorable expectations for the future. Entrepreneurs, who had more of these characteristics, tended to vote for Yeltsin as a result, while pensioners, who had almost none, tended to vote against Yeltsin. Unlike Poland, Russia failed to create pluralist politics in the early years of the transition, so no effective counterbalance emerged to offset managerial rent-seeking and the state was easily captured by well-organized industrial interests. The political elite were reelected because industrial interests bankrolled their campaign in return for promises that government largesse would continue to flow. Russia shows vividly how political economy affects policymaking, because of how openly and flagrantly government granted favors in return for electoral support. Bur special interests, venal bureaucrats, and the exchange of favors tend to be the rule, not the exemption, elsewhere as well.

Fuente: Banco Mundial
Clasificación: Reformas de Pensiones
Tipo de Publicación: Documentos de Trabajo
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Transferring Contributions to Individual Pension Accounts

Autor: Banco Mundial
Año: 2000
Resumen: Collecting contributions is more complicated in a decentralized pension system, based on individual accounts, than in a public system. Many public plans provide a defined benefit pension based on only a few years' earnings, which limits the need for keeping records of people's earnings and contributions in every year of their working life. And there is usually a choice of pension fund manager with individual accounts. Collection, record-keeping and transferring contributions to individual accounts has often proved problematic. Some reforms have been delayed or abandoned because of collection problems. Using a series of case studies of Latin American and European countries, this briefing highlights policy choices in operating individual accounts systems.

Fuente: Banco Mundial
Clasificación: Ahorro Previsional
Tipo de Publicación: Informes
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Personal Pension Plans and Stock Market Volatility

Autor: Alier, Max; Vittas, Dimitri.
Año: 2000
Resumen: One of the strongest objections to personal pension plans is that they transfer investment risk to individual workers, who are then exposed to the vagaries of equity and bond markets. Using historical United States data, the authors investigate the impact of the volatility of investment returns on replacement rates in the context of personal pension plans. They find large fluctuations in replacement rates across different cohorts of workers, if undiversified portfolios are used. They then explore a number of simple financial strategies for coping with this problem, including: a) portfolio diversification; b) a late, gradual shift to bonds; c) a gradual purchase of nominal or real annuities; d) a purchase of variable annuities. The first three strategies lower the volatility of replacement rates, but at significant cost in terms of lower replacement rates. The purchase of variable annuities reduces the dispersion of replacement rates across generations without lowering their level - because of the persistence of the equity premium and the fact that the volatility of equity returns is lower, the longer the holding period. Sophisticated financial engineering promises more efficient solutions to this problem, but it may not be feasible to apply it in developing countries (or in developing financial markets). Neither authors' approach nor the more sophisticated financial engineering solutions would be able to deal effectively with persistent deviations of investment returns from long trends. But the authors' findings suggest that overconcern about the impact on replacement rates of short-term volatility in stock markets may not be warranted.

Fuente: Banco Mundial
Clasificación: Fondos de Inversión
Tipo de Publicación: Documentos de Trabajo
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The Relevance of Index Funds for Pension Investment in Equities

Autor: Shah, Ajay; Fernandes, Kshama
Año: 2000
Resumen: The rise of index funds over the past 25 years has been a remarkable phenomenon. The traditional rationale for the success of index funds is market efficiency, net of transaction costs. The authors also focus on the role of agency conflicts between fund managers and investors, which are hard to resolve, given the low power of statistical tests of performance. Most of the empirical evidence about the superiority of index funds comes from the United States. The authors discuss issues associated with the application of index funds in developing countries, as well as policy issues in the financial sector that affect the enabling market infrastructure for index funds. They also apply these ideas to thinking about the relevance of index funds for pension investment. The equity premium provides powerful motivation for equity investment by pension funds. Index funds make it possible to sidestep the complexities of forming contracts and monitoring institutions to govern fund managers. In developing countries that seek to use index funds in pension investment, there are avenues through which policymakers can make index funds more viable. In many countries there are significant avenues for improving construction of the market index as well as market mechanisms used in the equity market.

Fuente: Banco Mundial
Clasificación: Fondos de Inversión
Tipo de Publicación: Documentos de Trabajo
Idioma:

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Reforming Pensions: Myths, Truths, and Policy Choices

Autor: Barr, Nicholas
Año: 2000
Resumen: This paper discusses the strategic building blocks of pension reform. The early sections set out the simple economics of pensions and discuss a series of myths which have proved remarkably persistent. Subsequent sections draw together the conclusions for policy design from earlier theoretical discussion, set out the prerequisites which any pension reform must respect, and discuss the range of choices facing policymakers. The main conclusions are threefold: the key variable is effective government; from an economic perspective the difference between PAYG and funding is second order; and the range of potential choice over pension design is wide.

Fuente: Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI)
Clasificación: Seguridad Social y Sistemas de Pensiones
Tipo de Publicación: Documentos de Trabajo
Idioma:

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