The funding for a Defined Benefit (DB) pension plan based on the fair valuation of the plan's insolvency risk

This study provides a contingent claims valuation approach model to value a sponsor's claim on a salary-related, defined benefit (DB) pension plan. The model is further developed to numerically estimate a suggested optimal contribution cost that allows the sponsor to fairly bear the risk of the plan's insolvency. The results demonstrate that the traditional actuarial valuation underestimates the cost of pension benefits, and that the normal contribution cost is not enough for the sponsor to fairly charge the value of bearing the plan's insolvency.     

Occupation pension for public employees in the People's Republic of China: A new approach with defined benefit underpin pension plan

The State Council of the People's Republic of China announced a reformed pension plan for public employees with the occupation pension plan in January 2015, officially disclosing that the social pension systems for private and public employees will be unified. Our proposed occupation pension plan for public employees is one of the important components in transiting from a dual‐track pension system to a sustainable and unified system. We aim at providing a pension design, that is, the defined benefit (DB ) underpin pension with estimates of the costs and benefits. We have used a financial engineering approach to calculate the hedge contribution for a DB underpin hybrid pension plan benefit. We also treat pension benefit and salaries in aggregate. Therefore, we propose a stochastic and exogenous salary model. Employees’ total benefits can be determined by multiple factors, such as inflation, economic environment, and employer's preference. However, the expectation of employees’ total benefits should not be affected by the change of salary and pension benefits. Our results could facilitate the ongoing pension reform in the People's Republic of China, providing a rigorous benchmark with public policy implications as to plan design, cost estimation, as well as risk management approach.     

DEFINED CONTRIBUTION PLANS, DEFINED BENEFIT PLANS, AND THE ACCUMULATION OF RETIREMENT WEALTH

The private pension structure in the United States, once dominated by defined benefit (DB) plans, is currently divided between defined contribution (DC) and DB plans. Wealth accumulation in DC plans depends on a participant's contribution behavior and on financial market returns, while accumulation in DB plans is sensitive to a participant's labor market experience and to plan parameters. This paper simulates the distribution of retirement wealth under representative DB and DC plans. It uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to explore how asset returns, earnings histories, and retirement plan characteristics contribute to the variation in retirement wealth outcomes. We simulate DC plan accumulation by randomly assigning individuals a share of wages that they and their employer contribute to the plan. We consider several possible asset allocation strategies, with asset returns drawn from the historical return distribution. Our DB plan simulations draw earnings histories from the HRS, and randomly assign each individual a pension plan drawn from a sample of large private and public defined benefit plans. The simulations yield distributions of both DC and DB wealth at retirement. Average retirement wealth accruals under current DC plans exceed average accruals under private sector DB plans, although DC plans are also more likely to generate very low retirement wealth outcomes. The comparison of current DC plans with more generous public sector DB plans is less definitive, because public sector DB plans are more generous on average than their private sector DB counterparts.     

国外职业年金的运作模式选择

目前世界各国的职业年金计划运作模式主要有给付确定型计划和缴费确定型计划两种.针对两种职业年金计划运作模式,结合英国、波兰和美国的职业年金改革实践,从受益者角度看,两种制度各有利弊.缴费确定型计划近年来在各国迅速取代给付确定型计划模式,而中国的企业年金计划则选择基金制的缴费确定型计划运作模式.     

Modeling longevity risk transfers as Nash bargaining problems: Methodology and insights

The problem of longevity risk has recently received considerable attention. In this paper, we apply economic modeling methods to longevity risk securitization, which is now regarded by pension and insurance industries as a solution to the problem. Specifically, we model the trade of a longevity security as a two-player bargaining game, and use Nash's bargaining solution to determine the outcome of it. Our work not only offers an alternative method for pricing longevity securities, but also reveals several properties about the market for longevity securities. First, a trade would occur if the longevity security is an effective hedging instrument, and the trade would benefit all agents involved. Second, a trade of longevity risk can reduce pension plans' bankruptcy risk, safeguarding the financial security of pension plan members. Finally, compared to the competitive equilibrium, Nash's bargaining solution yields higher trading prices. Therefore, as the market becomes more competitive, pension plans may hedge longevity risk at a lower cost.     

Heterogeneity effects on the management of retirement fund

This article studies the importance of plan members’ heterogeneity to the management of defined benefit (DB) pension fund. We propose a new multi-member model of DB pension fund that allows for heterogeneity in plan members’ retirement ages, salary growths and other characteristics. We first solve analytically for optimal management strategy and show that the sponsor’s supplementary contribution and the fund’s allocation in risky assets are determined by the cross-product between the fund’s expected retirement liabilities and some heterogeneity-adjusted discount factors. We then demonstrate that the presence of heterogeneity can have a significant influence on the optimal management strategy and that a management decision made while ignoring heterogeneity will be suboptimal. The knowledge of desirable and undesirable effects of heterogeneity that we uncover in this article also provides implications to the grouping of fund members. Introducing a presence of young member whose salary is positively correlated with the risky asset and avoid stacking members with negative correlations will all help the management.     

基于消费者物价指数的养老金担保成本评估模型

探讨了以消费者物价指数为最低担保的缴费确定型养老金计划,并在应用Copula函数度量投资组合回报率与消费者物价指数增长率的相关关系基础上,建立了评估这种担保成本的模型,最后给出了担保成本的随机模拟算法。     

Risk-return preferences in the pension domain: Are people able to choose?

This paper presents new evidence for the Netherlands on pension preferences and investor autonomy in the pension domain using a representative survey of about 1000 Dutch citizens. Our main conclusions are the following. Risk aversion is domain dependent and highest in the pension domain. The vast majority of respondents favours the currently dominant defined benefit pension system. If offered a combined defined benefit/defined contribution system, the majority would like to have a guaranteed pension income of at least 70% of their net labour income. Self-assessed risk tolerance and financial expertise are important individual explanatory variables of pension attitudes. The average respondent considers himself financially unsophisticated and is reluctant to take control of retirement savings investment, even when offered the possibility to increase expertise. Respondents who have chosen a relatively safe portfolio tend to switch to the riskier median portfolio when they are shown future income streams. This again suggests that many respondents currently lack the skills to have investor autonomy over investment for retirement.     

PENSION WEALTH AT MIDLIFE:COMPARING SELF-REPORTS WITH PROVIDER DATA

This paper evaluates the accuracy of estimates of pension wealth based on self-reports by comparing them to estimates based on provider data. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we found that few workers are well informed about their future pension benefits. Self-reports were often incomplete and typically varied widely from those based on information from providers. In defined benefit (DB) plans, discrepancies were greatest for workers who had limited education, earned low wages, and did not expect to retire soon. Differences in median pension wealth were smaller at the aggregate level than the individual level, because individual differences tended to offset each other when aggregated. Provider data appear better than self-reports for DB plans, but not for defined contribution (DC) plans. Where both are available, the best method of computing pension wealth may be to estimate DB wealth from provider data and to estimate DC wealth from self-reports.     

Annuity Values in Defined Contribution Retirement Systems: Australia and Singapore Compared

Annuities promise to play an increasingly important role in countries with national defined contribution retirement systems. In this article we examine life annuities in two countries, Singapore and Australia, each of which has a national mandatory pension program. Exploiting data on annuity pricing and purchase behaviour, we compare the money's worth of life annuity products across these two nations. Our results indicate that, after controlling on administrative loadings, there are important differences in measured adverse selection. Part of the explanation may be due to the different structures of the two countries’retirement systems.     

Why Sweden's pension reform was able to be successfully implemented

Governments that do not reform pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension systems will eventually face a pension crisis. In a democracy, reforms require majority support. The problem is that pension reform requires today's generation to bear the burden to avoid burdening tomorrow's generation. Sweden recently passed pension legislation that specifies a gradual transition from a public defined-benefit plan to a defined contribution plan. Why was Sweden successful in reforming its pension system? We find that a political economy perspective helps to answer this question: there are more winners who would vote in favour of the reform than non-winners who would vote against it. When comparing the net effect (present value of expected benefits minus present value of remaining contributions) of the new and old systems, contributions of the working generation (age < 53) are reduced by more than their expected benefits.     

Prior investment outcomes and stock investment in defined contribution plans

In this study, we employ the 2001–2013 Survey of Consumer Finances to examine how prior investment outcomes affect portfolio allocation in defined contribution (DC) plans. Results show that investors with prior gains are more likely to invest all DC plan assets in stocks. Factors such as risk tolerance and investment horizon positively affect investors’ tendency to allocate all DC assets to stocks. These findings have important implications for investors, researchers and financial professionals.     

U.S. Pensions in the 2000s: The Lost Decade?

The last three decades saw a sharp decline in traditional defined benefit (DB) pensions and a corresponding rise in defined contribution (DC) plans. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances from 1983 to 2010, I find that after robust gains in the 1980s and 1990s, pension wealth experienced a marked slowdown in growth from 2001 to 2007 and then fell in absolute terms from 2007 to 2010. Median augmented wealth (the sum of net worth, pensions, and Social Security wealth) advanced slower than median net worth from 1983 to 2007 and its inequality rose more, as DB wealth fell off. However, from 2007 to 2010, the opposite occurred. While median wealth plummeted by 41 percent and inequality spiked by 0.032 Gini points, median augmented wealth fell by only 21 percent and its Gini coefficient rose by only 0.009 points. The differences are due to the moderating influence of Social Security wealth.     

The Gender Pension Gap in China

ABSTRACT

China has had a large gender gap in labor force participation, sectors of employment, and earnings. This study shows that disadvantages in the labor market for women are the primary drivers of the gender pension gap. Among people age 60 and older, women receive about half of the amount of men's social pensions. Using the 2013 wave of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and the CHARLS Life History Survey of 2014, this contribution has three main findings. First, about three-quarters of the deficit in women's pensions is explained by women's lower likelihood of receiving occupational pensions, and one-third is due to smaller benefits when they do receive them. Second, the gender deficit in receiving an occupational pension can be explained by education level and employment sector. Third, among pension recipients, nearly one-third of the gender benefit gap is explained by women's fewer years of employment and lower salaries.     

Notional defined contribution pension schemes: why does only Sweden distribute the survivor dividend?

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of the survivor dividend in notional defined contribution (NDC) pension schemes. At present, this feature can only be found in the Swedish defined contribution scheme. We develop a model that endorses the idea that the survivor dividend has a strong basis for enabling the NDC scheme to achieve financial equilibrium and that not including the dividend is a non-transparent way of compensating for increases in longevity and/or legacy costs from old pension systems. We also find that the average effect of the dividend remains unchanged for any constant annual rate of population growth, that contributors who reach retirement age always get a higher return than the scheme does, and that population growth enables cohorts with more years of contributions to benefit to a greater extent from the dividend effect.     

SOCIAL SECURITY AND THE INTRAGENERATIONAL REDISTRIBUTION OF LIFETIME INCOME IN JAPAN*

We investigate how social security redistributes lifetime income within the same generation in Japan, based on data from the micro data. The progressivity of Japan's state pension programme appears to be much more limited on a lifetime basis than on an annual basis. Given an ageing population, replacing the current Pay As You Go system with a simple one that consists of a flat benefit and a wage‐proportional premium, and has no maximum contribution, can be desirable in terms of both efficiency and intragenerational equity. The redistributive effects of income tax and consumption tax to finance the benefit are also examined.     

生命周期、风险偏好和积累水平对DC型养老金资产配置策略的影响研究*

近年来,DC型养老金在我国得到了长足发展。DC型养老金的积累期长达数十年,如何通过有效的资产配置,实现参保人更高的养老效用是理论界和实务界都关注的问题。本文在默顿（Merton）连续时间最优投资-消费问题框架下,建立了DC型养老金最优资产配置问题的随机优化模型。以此为基础,本文研究了生命周期、风险偏好和积累水平对养老金积累期最优资产配置策略的影响。进而,通过Monte Carlo模拟,本文研究了最优资产配置策略与恒定资产配置比例策略下养老金积累效果的优劣。本文的结论证明,在放开DC型养老金投资限制的条件下,引入“生命周期基金”和“生命特征基金”,引导最优资产配置很有必要。     

Incentives and Voluntary Investment in Employer Shares

Using a partial equilibrium model, this paper makes a first attempt to provide an explanation based on rational behaviour for the basic big puzzle of why workers have large holdings of the shares of their employer in their defined contribution (DC) pension plans. The primary explanations in the literature seem to be behavioural ones that involve sub‐optimal behaviour. This paper attempts to see how far a standard optimizing setting in a principal–agent type framework can go in explaining the same phenomenon. It uses an incentive approach involving two agents, senior managers and workers to show how portfolio weights can be voluntarily shifted away from what would be first best in the absence of an incentive problem.     

A Portlander's View of Smart Growth

Metro, a regional planning authority, has written and implemented the nation's strongest and most comprehensive smart-growth plan in Portland, Oregon. For a region expected to grow in population by 80 percent in the next five decades, Metro's plan calls for a mere 6 percent expansion of land area; high-density housing in the form of apartments, mixed-use developments, and single-family homes on small lots; pedestrian-friendly design codes; 125 miles of rail transit; and almost no new highway construction. Though smart-growth advocates promise their policies will reduce congestion, clean the air, provide affordable housing, protect open space, and reduce urban-service costs, Metro's plan does the opposite of all these things. Metro planners predict its plan will quadruple the time Portlanders waste sitting in traffic by 2020 and increase smog by 10 percent. The artificial land shortage posed by the urban-growth boundary has already turned Portland from one of the nation's most affordable housing markets to one of the ten least affordable ones. The plan's demand for infill development is sacrificing valuable urban open space to protect abundant rural open space. Rail transit and high-density developments both require huge subsidies. Portlanders initially supported Metro's efforts because they were told that planning would save Portland from becoming like Los Angeles, the nation's most congested and polluted urban area. In fact, Los Angeles is also the nation's densest urban area and has the fewest miles of freeway per capita, making it the epitome of smart growth. This actually led Metro to conclude that its goal is to “replicate” Los Angeles' development patterns in Portland. The result is that Portland-area residents are increasingly hostile to Metro's plans.     

不同生育率情形下养老保险筹资模式比较研究

理论研究普遍认为,基金制养老保险筹资模式优于现收现付制,但这几乎都是基于人均资本视角的判断。本文在外生和内生生育率两种情形下,从福利经济学视角分析基金制是否完全优于现收现付制。理论模型表明,在一定参数组合下,无论外生生育率还是内生生育率,都存在使现收现付制下社会福利高于基金制下社会福利的养老保险缴费率。模型的数值模拟显示,存在使现收现付制下社会福利更高的养老保险缴费率,且在外生生育率下（符合我国生育政策）现收现付制缴费率在12%左右社会福利最高,内生生育率下（符合发达国家生育政策）现收现付制缴费率在6%左右社会福利最高。前一数值与已有研究成果观点相近(我国社会统筹部分缴费率应下降到15%左右),后一数值与美国（62%）、日本（77%）等发达国家现收现付制养老保险缴费率相近。稳健性检验显示,只要参数赋值在合理范围内,数值模拟主要结论不变。本文为降低现行我国社会统筹部分养老保险缴费率提供了理论借鉴。