Pension Strategies in Europe and the United States

Demographic realities will soon force developed countries to find ways to pay forlonger retirements for more people. In Pension Strategies in Europe and the United States, leadingeconomists analyze topical issues in pension policy, with a focus on raising the retirement age,increasing retirement savings, and the political sustainability of reforms that will accomplishthese goals. After a substantive and wide-ranging introduction by the editors that weaves togetherthe demographic and economic strands of the story, the chapters present cutting-edge research,offering both theoretical and empirical analyses. Contributors examine such topics as the reform ofkey structural features of existing pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension systems, analyzing how benefitsshould vary with the age of retirement, labor supply elasticity after France's 1993 pension reform,and fiscal response to a demographic shock; the feasibility of PAYG reforms in the United States andthe competition among state pension systems that results from labor mobility in Europe; and private,funded systems (increasingly perceived as necessary adjuncts to PAYG systems) in the UK, the US, andthe Netherlands, and in terms of individual portfolio management. The editors conclude the volumewith a study of recent German and UK reforms and their effects on personalsavings.ContributorsTheodore C. Bergstrom, A. Lans Bovenberg, Antoine Bozio, Woojen Chung, Juan C.Conesa, Gabrielle Demange, Richard Disney, Carl Emmerson, Robert Fenge, Luisa Fuster, CarlosGarriga, Christian Gollier, John L. Hartman, Ayse Imrohoroglu, Selahattin Imrohoroglu, Thijs Knaap,Georges de Menil, Pierre Pestieau, Eytan Sheshinski, Matthew WakefieldRobert Fenge is SeniorResearch Fellow at the Ifo Institute for Economic Research and Assistant Professor of Economics atthe University of Munich. Georges de Menil is Professor of Economics at Ecole des Hautes Etudes enSciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. Pierre Pestieau is Professor of Economics at the University ofLiege. Fenge and Pestieau are coauthors of Social Security and Early Retirement (MIT Press,2005).

Robert Fenge is Senior Research Fellow at the Ifo Institute for Economic Research and Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Munich. ierre Pestieau is Professor of Economics at the University of Liege. Fenge is coauthor (with Pierre Pestieau) of Social Security and Early Retirement (MIT Press, 2005).