Cagri S. Kumru

The Effect of Status on Voluntary Contribution

Fundraisers often start their campaigns by soliciting the wealthier, more recognized and respected individuals in a community. We examine whether an explanation for such a solicitation ordering may be that people prefer to associate with those of higher social ranking than themselves. Using a simple linear example we demonstrate that concerns for status may give rise to an optimal solicitation ordering similar to that used by fundraisers. Aggregate contributions and earnings are larger when high-status donors are solicited before rather than after those of low status. To investigate this comparative static experimentally we induce a status differential in the laboratory and reverse the contribution order between high- and low-status participants. We find that low-status followers are likely to mimic contributions by high-status leaders and this encourages high status leaders to contribute. Contributions are therefore larger when individuals of high status contribute before, rather than after, those of low status.

Should Public Retirement Provision Be Means-Tested?

The complex matrix of retirement policy trade-offs – encompassing elements of paternalism, market failure, and overlaying incentives in a life-cycle context – have received much attention in the literature. But the issue of whether publicly-funded retirement provision should be means-tested, and if so how, has received limited attention, although it has been highlighted from time to time. This paper examines the economic welfare effects of means testing using a stochastic overlapping generations model calibrated to the UK economy. A labor-leisure choice is incorporated, with multiple individuals differentiated by endowments of effective labor. Our results indicate that a change in the taper rate has implications for both welfare and economic aggregates. In particular, with a second tier pension in place, it is welfare improving to strictly means-test the first pillar. In contrast to much received wisdom, higher taper rates increase social welfare.

Managing public investment funds: best practices and new questions

Large publicly-held pools of assets are playing an increasingly prominent role in the global investment arena. We compare three distinct forms of such public funds, namely foreign exchange reserve funds, sovereign wealth funds, and public pension funds, to highlight their differences and similarities. We review previous studies on ways to better secure prudent and economically sound public fund management practices in these funds, as well as how to evaluate their governance and investment policies and how to better protect the assets from political interference. Drawing from the pension and corporate finance literature, we also link their management to governance practices and country-specific characteristics, and contrast those with empirical findings on linkages with corporate governance.

Optimal Capital Income Taxation with Means-tested Benefits

This paper studies the interaction between capital income taxation and a means tested age pension in the context of an overlapping generations model, calibrated to the UK economy. Recent literature has suggested a rehabilitation of capital income taxation (Conesa et al. (2009)), predicated on the idea that capital is a complement with retirement leisure. This leads naturally to the conjecture that a publicly funded age pension contingent upon holdings of capital or capital income may have a similar effect. We formalize this using a stochastic OLG model with multiple individuals differentiated by labour productivity and pension entitlement. Our preliminary findings suggest that a means tested pension has effects similar to capital income taxation in a life-cycle context.

How Well Does the Australian Aged Pension Provide Social Insurance

Social security plays an essential role in an economy, but if designed incorrectly can distort the labor supply and savings behavior of individuals in the economy. We explore how well the Australian means-tested pension system provides social insurance by calculating possible welfare gains from changing the settings in the current means-tested pension system. This work has been explored by other researchers both in Australia and in other pension-providing economies. However, most research ignores the fact that welfare gains can be found by reducing the cost of the program. To exclude these welfare costs, this paper fixes the cost of the system. We find that the means-tested pension system is welfare reducing, but does provide a better outcome than an equivalent-costing PAYG system. We also find that if the benefit amount is held constant, and hence the cost of the pension program is allowed to vary, a taper rate of 1.0 is optimal. However, once we fix this cost, a universal benefit scheme provides the best welfare outcome.

A Note on Resource Testing and Temptation

This study analyzes the relative performance in terms of welfare of the current U.S. PAYG system compared to an array of cost equivalent alternative specifications of means-tested pension programs. We conduct our analysis under two different settings. While in the first setting, individuals have standard preferences, in the second setting individuals have self-control preferences. We show that the implications of the reform substantially differs across the two settings.

Means Testing Social Security: Modeling and Policy Analysis

Means testing can balance the need to provide adequate retirement incomes with the requirement that such provision is fiscally sustainable and economically efficient. Critics of the policy suggest that to reduce benefits as a retiree’s income and/or wealth increase is to discourage work and savings. Yet such distortions are small compared to those resulting from large earnings related pensions that, due to demographic change, require greater levels of financing via payroll taxes. Some form of means testing exists in most countries, usually involving small, safety-net schemes that target the poorest retirees (e.g., the Supplemental Security Income program in the U.S.). But an appropriately designed means-testing instrument can also be used to reduce the liability of large, publicly financed social security promises by excluding the affluent. This paper summarises means-testing design and implementation in a number of OECD countries as well as tackling key criticisms of means testing. In doing so, we discuss a number of recent, cutting-edge modelling approaches and empirical insights that examine economic impacts of means testing in the Australian and U.S. contexts.

Temptation‐Driven Behavior and Taxation: A Quantitative Analysis in a Life‐Cycle Model

This paper examines the impact of labor and capital income taxes in a stochastic overlapping generations (OLG) economy where agents face borrowing constraints and their behavior is temptation driven. We quantitatively establish that the existence of temptation in preferences may function as an opposing mechanism to modeling choices, such as liquidity constraints, life-cycle structure, and idiosyncratic earnings risks, that are critical in delivering a positive capital income tax rate. We show that a sufficiently large measure of individuals having self-control preferences, or alternatively, a sufficiently high cost of exercising self-control, puts downward pressure on the optimal capital income tax rate.

Implications of Alternative Banking Systems

A signicant number of individuals are unwilling to deposit their savings into the banking sector since it does not operate according to their religious beliefs. In this paper we provide a model that aims to answer the following questions: First, under what conditions an alternative banking system would arise? Second, what are the growth, and welfare implications of these banking systems? Our model shows that an alternative banking system would arise if individuals have religious concerns. Moreover, we show that in an economy populated with a certain number of religiously concerned individuals, the existence of an alternative baking system can generate relatively higher growth and improve welfare.