OECD pension reform: The role of demographic trends and the business cycle

Using a new real-time dataset from Beetsma et al. (2020) containing all pension reform measures in 23 OECD countries between 1970 and 2017, we demonstrate that, in contrast to what one might a priori expect, the timing of pension reform measures coincides with business cycle shocks and not with current or projected demographic shocks. The OECD-wide demography only explains the general reform trend. We rationalize this finding using a political-economy model with two-sided adjustment costs to explain a lack of response of pension reform measures to changes in demographic indicators.