CHANGING PENSION POLICY AND THE AGING OF AMERICA

The recently enacted Tax Reform Act of 1986 contains a number of pension policy provisions including faster vesting for private-sector, single-employer pension plans and imposing tax penalties on preretirement pension plan distributions that are not saved until retirement age. Since pensions are a long-term commitment, the impact of pension policy changes may not be fully realized for a number of years. For that reason, the effects of the Tax Reform Act's pension provisions are investigated using both short-run and long-run simulation models. Faster vesting would immediately entitle an additional 1.9 million pension plan participants to pension benefits at retirement. This increase would not, however, be translated directly into significant gains in pension recipiency for workers currently in their 50s. Nevertheless, by the time the baby boom generation retires, faster vesting and lump-sum penalties could provide more retirees with pensions and increase the standard of living of pension recipients.     

The effect of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act upon employee benefits

FMLA will substantially influence the administration of employee benefits. The plan sponsor, trustees, plan administrator and collective bargaining parties must make a number of policy decisions. These include employer reporting and contribution procedures, settlement of eligibility questions, delinquency procedures, coordination with COBRA, substitution of vacation and sick leave rights and procedures, restrictions on participants working during leave, procedures for the non-forfeiture of accrued benefits and restoration of benefits. After the policy decisions are made and the procedures are established, the proper notices and caveats must be communicated to plan participants, and the plan must update the SPD. Each of the policy decisions, administrative procedures and participant communications must be carefully thought out before implementation. Plan sponsors, trustees and plan administrators should seek the help, advice and assistance of the plan's professional advisers.     

Protecting the subrogation rights of self-insured group health plans

As a means of controlling costs, self-insured group health plans often contain subrogation provisions that give the plan a right to recoup benefits paid to a plan participant or beneficiary who recovers damages from a third party. Such subrogation claims are frequently contested, so it is important that a plan's subrogation provisions are properly drafted.     

Structure and Design of the Fringe Benefits Tax

The aim of this article is to provide an introduction for economists to the legal structure of the fringe benefits tax legislation. The article is not concerned with the analysis of the provisions of the legislation, but, rather with the design rules employed by the drafters in implementing the Government's policy to impose a tax on employers on non-cash fringe benefits provided to employees.     

An examination of financial impacts of SFAS No. 106

Conclusion SFAS No. 106 requires companies to accrue the expected cost of OPEB during the years employees provide services to the company. The Statement is based on the assumption that OPEB are a form of deferred compensation and the resulting obligation should be recognized when services are rendered. This article examined some provisions of the Statement and the possible impact on financial statements of affected companies as well as management efforts to control OPEB costs. The results indicate that adoption of SFAS No. 106 has caused companies to report OPEB transition obligations on their balance sheets and to show higher OPEB annual expenses on their income statements. These perceived negative financial impacts of adopting SFAS No. 106 do not appear to have encouraged management to take immediate actions to curtail the promised OPEB. However, in many cases, management is considering implementing changes in plan design such as increasing or imposing retiree contribution levels or retiree deductibles and higher coinsurance levels, reducing benefits and coverage, and changing coordination of benefits with Medicare in attempt to mitigate the possible negative financial impacts of adopting SFAS No. 106.     

Benefits Of Communications Infrastructure Capital In U.S. Economy

In this paper we empirically estimate the contribution of the communications infrastructure to the growth of output and productivity at the dis-aggregate industry and at the aggregate economy levels. The estimated value of the marginal benefits or the shadow price of the communications infrastructure capital is positive in each of 34 industries representing the major industrial sectors of the U.S. economy. This effect captures network externality benefits and can be interpreted as a willingness to pay by each industry for communications infrastructure capital services over and above their direct payments for communications services. These results suggest that an increase in communications infrastructure capital services reduces cost in all the industries and as a consequence that of the entire economy. The relatively high value of estimated total marginal benefits for the aggregate economy indicates a high social rate of return to the investments in communications infrastructure.     

Making Internet benefits enrollment work for you

With all of its promise, the Internet is virtually impossible for a benefits administrator to ignore, but implementing an Internet-enabled benefits administration system is not without its challenges. However, with the proper care and planning, any employer, regardless of size or employee population, can successfully leverage this technology to simplify benefits administration, reduce costs and improve the level of service to plan participants.     

国外知识产权确认不侵权之诉的分析与借鉴

他山之玉,可以攻石。研究其他国家对于确认不侵权之诉的规定,横向考察国外知识产权确认不侵权之诉的法律渊源,广泛涉猎国际条约、英美法系、大陆法系国家的相关具体规定。可以看到这些国家早在一个世纪甚至更早之前就对市场参与者利用不当警告损害竞争对手的问题提供了各种保护和救济途径。中国应该借鉴和吸收这些国家的规定,完善确认不侵权之诉的相关制度,这不仅是遵守《巴黎公约》规定的国际义务,也是知识经济时代急迫的现实要求。     

Severance Payment Programs in Latin America

Latin America stands out among different regions in the world for her high employment termination costs. To this contribute both a high level of severance payments and the existence of overlapping benefits. The effectiveness of these protective measures, however, is limited by the size of the informal sector, which, in turn, may be related to employment protection levels. Another important limitation on the effectiveness of employment protection regulation is the often large transaction costs associated with making good of law provisions for the worker. Equilibrium severance pay levels may thus be well below what law mandates as evidence of low coverage rates and undesirable side effects is mounting, reform seems a critical policy issue. However, this reform cannot focus exclusively on severance pay, but it has to incorporate other overlapping benefits, such as UISAs, and advance notice. It also has to contend with a problematic political economy. Jaramillo is a Senior Researcher at the Group for Analysis of Development, GRADE. Saavedra is with the World Bank. Authors are grateful to Eduardo Nakasone for superb research assistance. They also wish to thank participants at the World Bank’s International Workshop on Severance Payments Reform (Laxenberg/Vienna, 2003) for valuable comments.     

Infrastructure: What Is Needed and How Do We Pay for It?

Claims of an infrastructure crisis lack definition, and fail to provide evidence that investment projects that would generate an economic return, including both private and social benefits, are not being funded. This paper shows how setting economic prices for energy, water, transport and communications will provide a better guide to the optimal amount of future infrastructure investment than the likely responses by proponents of an alleged infrastructure crisis.     

Spectrum allocation in Latin America: An economic analysis

As elsewhere, wireless markets play a crucial role in Latin American economic growth. Mobile telephone networks increasingly provide the communications infrastructure that has largely been lacking throughout the region. Yet, governments have generally made only modest allocations of bandwidth available to Latin American wireless operators, either absolutely (in terms of spectrum each country could allocate at modest opportunity cost) or relative to countries in North America, Asia and the European Union. Using an empirical model estimated on mobile phone data for international markets, we show that very large social benefits are available to countries that make more spectrum available for mobile phone markets. We conduct simulations using our calibrated model to provide lower bounds for country-by-country gains from larger allocations. We also discuss the impact of alternative regulatory regimes on the feasibility to achieve those social gains.     

Multiple HMO/indemnity plan supplement design: a managed care strategy for employers with high HMO enrollment

This article outlines a health care benefits strategy that combines features of the multiple HMO choice approach and the point-of-service approach. Although this plan design may not be appropriate for all employers, it may provide the greatest long-term cost savings for employers with high HMO enrollment, according to the author.     

Improved rangeland management with an Earth Resource Survey system

Recent advances in communications and satellite technology now make it possible to provide large, synoptic imagery of the earth's surface at relatively low cost. This paper reports on acase study that was designed to estimate the benefits that might be realized by rangeland managers from an Earth Resources Survey system. Information needs and current practices are first discussed and then related to available remote sensing and data distribution techniques. The analysis showed that cost savings from an applications system would be broadly evident in the areas of resource re-allocation, range productivity, and livestock management. Depending upon the assumptions concerning the discount rate and factors affecting technological diffusion, total benefits were estimated to range from $38.7 million to $115.4 million over 10-year operational period.     

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.     

Taxes,Retirement Transfers,and Annuities*

In most countries, retirement benefits from pension saving must be taken as an annuity. By contrast, Australia allows benefits to be taken as a lump sum, and instead has recently introduced various tax incentives to encourage annuity purchase. This paper investigates the effectiveness of these tax concessions, and concludes that they do little to achieve this objective This is because they are nullified by the provisions of the broader tax and social security framework within which Australian private pension policy is set     

PROVIDING INCOME SECURITY TO THE ELDERLY: THE ROLE OF PROGRAMS OTHER THAN SOCIAL SECURITY

Social Security retirement benefits have had a dramatic effect on the elderly's economic well-being over the last four decades. Many other facets of federal law have also enhanced the elderly's income security and should not be overlooked, however. Today, the elderly receive income from an amalgam of publicly and privately organized programs and individual provisions. The primary goal of these programs is to provide adequate income to the elderly. While all the major components of this loosely configured system, as we know it now, have evolved in the last 45 years, they have not developed at the same rate. It is important to understand this point because the relative role of the various income sources for future groups of the elderly will be somewhat different than for current ones     

A net impact analysis of active labour programmes in Hungary

This paper presents estimates of the impact on re-employment and earnings of the two most popular active labour programmes used during the economic transition in Hungary: retraining and public service employment (PSE). To adjust for non-random assignment of programme participants, net impacts were computed using matched pair samples and regression models. The evidence suggests retraining may improve the chance for reemployment, is unlikely to improve re-employment earnings, but may improve job durability. Net societal benefits could be improved by retraining relatively more males, older persons, and those with less education. PSE does not appear to provide a reliable path to a regular non-subsidized job, and may even lower re-employment earnings. PSE might best be viewed as an income transfer programme having the collateral benefit of maintaining basic work habits. The net societal impact of PSE could increase if it involved relatively more females and older persons.     

Default and aggregate income

This paper studies how default varies with aggregate income. We analyze a model in which optimal contracts enable risk sharing of privately observed, idiosyncratic income by allowing for default. Default provisions allow agents with low idiosyncratic income realizations to repay less and thus provide insurance. Default penalties ensure that only these agents default. We show that default can occur under the optimal contract and that default provisions vary with aggregate income. We provide conditions such that both the amount of default and default penalties vary countercyclically with aggregate income and show that the default rate can be discontinuous.