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Automatic Adjustment Mechanisms in Asian Pension Systems?
Automatic adjustment mechanisms (AAMs)—rules ensuring that certain characteristics of a pension system respond to demographic, macroeconomic and financial developments, in a predetermined fashion and without the need for additional intervention—have been introduced in many OECD countries to tackle public pension schemes’ deteriorating financial sustainability. Incorporating AAMs—in particular linking retirement age to life expectancy—can be an important part of pension reforms in Asia. If implemented early, AAMs could help prevent the need for sharp adjustments in the future, increase the predictability and inter-generational equity of pension systems and enhance confidence.
Private Pensions Series OECD 2000 Private Pensions Conference
This conference proceedings examines private pension reform in OECD countries, covering regulatory and supervisory issues, benefits, and system structure and coverage.
Ukraine
This paper discusses four key issues, which are closely connected, on tax policy in Ukraine. These issues are social security contribution (SSC), the simplified tax regime for small taxpayers, the corporate profit tax, and excise tax. Ukraine's SSC rates are very high, which are associated with an oversized informal sector that erodes the tax base, while the simplified tax regime for small taxpayers provides inordinate benefits that weaken the tax system and is prone to abuse. Corporate profit tax revenue has declined to its lowest level since 2006 and is now well below the regional average. Excise taxes have become an important revenue source, but remain low by international standards.
Fiscal Monitor, April 2014
Fiscal risks are abating somewhat but remain elevated. In advanced economies, recent policy moves have broadly stabilized public debt ratios, but medium-term prospects are still uncertain, and debt remains at historic highs. Fiscal vulnerabilities are rising in both emerging market economies and low-income countries, although in most cases from relatively moderate levels. Across country groups, fiscal policy should aim at rebuilding policy space while supporting the recovery and long-term growth prospects.
How to Assess Fiscal Implications of Demographic Shifts
Over the next few decades, the world will experience significant demographic shifts, with material fiscal implications. In many advanced and emerging market economies, aging populations will lead to higher spending on pensions and health care. Moreover, projected population dynamics will adversely affect growth and government revenues. Building on and extending a 2015 IMF Staff Discussion Note by Clements and others, this note presents a simple framework that can assist researchers in quantifying the effects of demographic changes resulting from population aging on government fiscal balances. It includes two country applications of the framework and an associated template. The note addresses several key questions: What are channels through which demographic changes could affect public finances? How can we quantify the fiscal impact of demographic changes? How can we tailor the assessment to country-specific circumstances?
From Expenditure Consolidation to Expenditure Efficiency
This paper reviews public expenditure in Lithuania to identify areas where deeper structural reforms may be warranted to improve spending efficiency and contain future spending pressures. The analysis benchmarks spending in Lithuania against other European countries focusing on spending levels, spending composition, and spending outcomes, and for both economic and functional spending classifications. While recent expenditure consolidation efforts have kept public spending among the lowest in Europe, a transition from broad-based measures to more structural measures will be required: to ensure that low spending levels remain sustainable, to address poor social outcomes such as high inequality and poor health and education outcomes, and to efficiently and equitably contain spending pressures arising from an ageing population.
Dispelling Fiscal Illusions
When rights and obligations are not recognized as assets and liabilities on a government’s balance sheet, the government’s deficit can be reduced by selling off-balance-sheet assets or incurring off-balance-sheet liabilities. This paper examines how much progress has been made in recognizing assets and liabilities and thus dispelling the fiscal illusions that such transactions create. Looking at the accounts, government-finance statistics, and long-term fiscal projections produced in 28 advanced economies in the period since 2003, it finds good progress in the recognition of some assets and liabilities, such as accounts payable and simple financial assets, but much less in others, such as civil-service pensions.
Household Savings in Selected Southern European Countries Evidence from Cross-Country Micro-Level Data
The paper looks into the puzzle of low household savings in three Southern European (SE3) countries – Cyprus, Greece, and Portugal. Building on the household saving drivers literature, we employ cross-country micro-level data and investigate the key saving patterns, examining their heterogeneity across households in SE3 countries relative to the EA average. The results confirm the prominent role of income, along with interest rate, inflation, fiscal balance, and debt in shaping household savings in SE3 countries. Quantile regressions employed to analyze saving behavior across the distribution of households suggest that households with lower savings tend to see their savings dip (or dissavings rise) more-than-proportionately with shocks to income, interest rate, inflation, and government balance. Our policy simulations across the distribution of households suggest that targeted rather than universal policy intervention could improve household savings, especially of the most vulnerable ones.
Public Wage Bills in the Middle East and Central Asia
Analysis of policies for managing public sector wage bills in the Middle East and Central Asia region. While some work has been done recently at the Fund on issues related to government employment and compensation, to our knowledge, this is the first study to systematically examine, with a focus on the Middle East and Central Asia region, the recent trends and drivers of public wage bills in the region and to identify key policy implications.
