Backing out of private pension provision: lessons from Germany

Financing pensions in the EU is a challenge. Many EU countries introduced private pension schemes to compensate declining public pension levels due to reforms made necessary by demographic change. In 2001, Germany introduced the Riester pension. Ten years after introduction the prevalence rate of this voluntary private pension scheme approximates 37 %. However, numerous criticisms raise doubts that the market for Riester products is transparent. Using the 2010 German SAVE survey, this article investigates terminated and dormant Riester contracts on a household level for the first time. Respectively 14.5 and 12.5 % of households who own or have owned a Riester contract terminated or set dormant their contract. We find that around 45 % of terminated or dormant Riester contracts are caused at least partly by product-related reasons, which is significantly higher than for endowment life insurance contracts. The uptake of a new contract after a termination is more likely if a termination is product-related. Nevertheless, after a termination 73 % of households do not sign a new contract, which can have serious long-term consequences for old-age income. Households with low income, low financial wealth or low pension literacy are more likely to have terminated or dormant contracts. Low income and low financial wealth households also have the lowest prevalence rate of Riester contracts and are at higher risk of old-age poverty.     

GPs as firms: Creating an internal market for primary care

Outsiders are often amazed at the lack of contact and communication between general practitioners and other members of the primary care team on the one hand, and the rest of the national health service on the other. One way to help close the gap and improve services generally would be to provide GPS with appropriate incentives.     

A New Approach to Random Utility Modeling using the Dirichlet Multinomial Distribution

In this paper we introduce a new econometricapproach to analyzing recreational site choicedata, the Dirichlet multinomial model. Thismodel, which nests the standard conditionalmultinomial logit model, can accommodateover-dispersed data and may provide moreefficient estimators of coefficients andconsequent welfare measures than the standardconditional logit model, which is so widelyused in the Random Utility Model approach torecreation demand. We illustrate thisDirichlet approach using a data set of rockclimbers in Scotland, and study the impacts onper-trip consumers surplus of alternativemanagement strategies for popular rock climbingsites. Results show that the Dirichletmultinomial approach produces coefficient andwelfare estimates having smaller samplingvariability in this case. We also compareclassical welfare measures with their posteriorequivalents, which allow for welfare changes tobe dis-aggregated.     

Stochastic Generational Accounting Applied to Reforms of Dutch Occupational Pensions

This paper examines stochastic or ‘value based’ generational accounting as a method to assess the intergenerational redistributive impact of pension reform. The analysis is applied to three policy changes to the regulation of Dutch occupational pensions during the years 2012 and 2013 that mark the transition from defined benefit pensions to ‘defined ambition’ pension schemes.     

Competitiveness, partnership — and democracy? Putting the “local” back into London government

The division of the powers and responsibilities of government in London has been a constant source of friction and debate between central and local government. In the wake of the abolition of the Greater London Council, the Conservative government waited for the corporate sector to take the lead. When this failed to materialise, a complicated array of unelected agencies and partnerships were constructed to promote London, deliver services and allocate expenditure. This paper reviews the nature and function of these organisations and examines proposals for regional development agencies and an elected strategic authority for the capital arising from the election of a Labour government in May 1997. While pointing to considerable organisational innovation, for instance in the setting up of the Government Office for London, it is argued that, during 18 years of Conservative government, the emphasis on policy delivery through a variety of discrete partnership agencies deliberately overlooked issues of subsidiarity and local accountability. Thus the debate about the relationship between central and local government in London reflects substantial philosophical differences between the two parties. The Labour government's proposals for a strategic authority and regional development agency will require a substantial reallocation of powers and functions between a number of overlapping and competing agencies and a redefinition of what are legitimately local and central functions.     

Overindebtedness and Overlegalization: Consumer Bankruptcy as a Field for Alternative Dispute Resolution

In the advisory report to the European Commission (Huls et al., 1994), the conclusion was reached that the optimal European solution for overindebtedness of consumers is a combination of legal change and a strengthening of the work of social debt counsellors. It was argued that the two spheres, the legal and the social, should be linked in order to create a constructive coalition.Europe has learned from the USA how to introduce the concept "discharge of debts" into their legislation (Huls, 1992). The USA may learn from Europe how debt counsellors can play a more vital part in tackling the debt problem of consumers. This paper explores the possibilities for expanding the domain of non-legal actors in this field by looking at legal aid discussions in general, and more specifically at the new Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) trend that is developing both in the USA and Europe.In the first section of the paper, the importance of an adequate definition of the problem is stressed. The following section summarizes the model proposed in Huls et al. (1994). It is followed by a plea for professional and independent debt counselling, a prerequisite for dejuridification of the debt problem, and for a coupling of debt problems to legal aid discussions. This leads to the conclusion that a strong case can be made for debt counselling as a form of ADR.     

Constructing identities in Indian networks: Discourses of marketing management in inter-organizational relationships

This paper explores business-to-business (B2B) marketing values and knowledge systems in India and their impact on identity construction in industrial networks. Our study moves methodological approaches into more interpretive territory by acknowledging the processes of social construction in networks as articulated by the IMP Group. We bring an interdisciplinary perspective to B2B marketing studies by recognizing cultural influences on managers' constructions of Indian modernity and explore what these linguistic moves may mean for the management of buyer–seller relationships. We highlight the dexterity with which individual actors discursively position themselves, their (and other) firms and countries by drawing upon a range of interpretive repertoires in their accounts of relationship management. Our chief contribution is to conceptually synthesize some of the discursive forces at work in identity processes within Indian business networks and to empirically illustrate the inherent tensions within managers' talk as they construct individual, organizational and national identities.