Mario Catalan

Contractual savings or stock market development - Which leads?

The authors study the relationship between the development of contractual savings (assets of pension funds, and life insurance companies) and non-life insurance, and, the development of stock markets (market capitalization and value traded). Their contribution lies in providing time-series evidence on a hypothesis that is very popular - but had not been substantiated - among supporters of fully funded pension systems in which funds invest large shares of their portfolios in tradable securities (equities, bonds). The literature is not clear on its assumption regarding causality between contractual savings, and capital market development. A one-way or two-way relationship is assumed, usually inter-changeably; the authors address the questions of which leads empirically. They present the evidence, including descriptive statistics, and the results of Granger causality tests, for OECD countries, and such countries as Chile, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, and Thailand. They do not present a theoretical framework, but do explain how the growth of the contractual savings sector, is thought to promote financial development. The authors find evidence in the data that causality between institutions, and markets either does not exist, or, if it exists, runs predominantly from institutions to markets. To a lesser extent, there is simultaneous causality between institutions, and markets. Furthermore, there is limited evidence that causality runs only from markets to institutions (the only exception seems to be for non-life insurance in developing countries). Results seem to support the idea that the development of institutional investors, is likely to promote the growth of market capitalization, more than that of value traded. In developing countries, there seems to be no causality from pension funds to growth in value traded, while there is causality from life, and non-life insurance.

Coping with Spain's Aging: Retirement Rules and Incentives

This paper evaluates the macroeconomic and welfare effects of extending the averaging period used to calculate pension benefits in a pay-as-you-go system. It also examines the complementarities between reforms extending the averaging period and those increasing the retirement age under alternative tax policies. The analysis is based on a model in the Auerbach-Kotlikoff tradition applied to the Spanish economy. Without reforms, the simulations suggest that aging-related spending as a share of output will increase 16 percentage points by 2050, which are twice as much as in European Commission (2006) projections due to general equilibrium effects. Also, reforms extending the averaging period to the entire work life limit expenditure pressures at the peak of the demographic shock as much as increasing the retirement age in line with life expectancy (4 percentage points of GDP). These reforms and pre-funding the demographic shock mitigate the adverse macroeconomic effects of aging and improve welfare.

Global Aging and Declining World Interest Rates; Macroeconomic Insurance Through Pension Reform in Cyprus

How will the world-wide decline in real interest rates associated with global aging affect small open economies (SOEs) with aging populations? Lower interest rates will result in higher capital-labor ratios and increased wages; higher wages, in turn, will be passed on to pension benefits, exacerbating aging-related fiscal pressures. The pass-through effect will be stronger if pensions are indexed to nominal wages rather than prices. Using an overlapping generations model, the paper illustrates the interest rates transmission mechanism and its interaction with pension indexation for the case of Cyprus. In addition, the paper evaluates the capacity of pension reforms to insure the economy against long-run movements in world interest rates. It concludes that pension reforms, particularly those that change the indexation of pensions from wages to prices, provide substantial macro-insurance and shock absorption benefits.

Bank Capital and Lending: An Extended Framework and Evidence of Nonlinearity

This paper studies the transmission of bank capital shocks to loan supply in Indonesia. A series of theoretically founded dynamic panel data models are estimated and find nonlinear effects of capital on loan growth: the response of weaker banks to changes in their capital positions is larger than that of stronger banks. This non-linearity implies that not only the level of capital but also its distribution across banks in the financial system affects the transmission of shocks to aggregate lending. Likewise, the effects of bank recapitalization on loan growth depend on banks’ starting capital positions and the size of capital injections.

On the optimality of bank capital requirement policy in a macroeconomic framework

An increasingly widespread “macro-prudential” view holds that bank capital requirements should be loosened during recessions and tightened during expansions to avoid excessive credit and output swings. We present a dynamic general equilibrium framework that accounts for the effects of capital requirement policies on the saving decisions of households, and, through this channel, on bank loans and output. We evaluate optimal capital requirement policy in the presence of loan write-offs (loan supply) and productivity (loan demand) shocks. We show that capital requirements should be reduced in response to unanticipated loan write-offs. We also show that capital requirements should be tightened in anticipation of future declines in productivity, and loosened at the onset of recessions. We conclude that macro-prudential capital requirement policies can be optimal from a welfare standpoint, but they can also generate output and credit booms through general equilibrium effects.

A Tradeoff between the Output and Current Account Effects of Pension Reform

We compare the long-term output and current account effects of pension reforms that increase the retirement age with those of reforms that cut pension benefits, conditional on reforms achieving similar fiscal targets. We show the presence of a policy trade-off. Pension reforms that increase the retirement age have a large positive effect on output, but a small (and often negative) effect on the current account. In contrast, reforms that cut pension benefits improve the current account balance but reduce output. Mixed pension reforms, which extend the working life and cut pension benefits, can simultaneously boost output and the current account.

Pension and Corporate Governance Reforms: are They Twins?

The academic literature on pension governance is sparse and this book will fill some important gaps by bringing together original contributions from around the world on subjects related to the area. The book initially lays out the main frameworks for pension fund governance and then goes on to examine global governance practice and experience and country studies on pension funds in the United States and Australia. The final section of this in-depth study discusses the role of government guarantees.