Paola Profeta

The political economy of social security: a survey

This paper surveys the literature on the political economy of social security. We review models that address the following questions: (i) Why do social security programs that transfer resources from young and middle-aged workers to the elderly exist? (ii) What are the economic and political interactions between social security systems and other redistributive programs of the welfare state? (iii) How does political sustainability shape social security systems in a dynamic economic and demographic environment, and which social security reforms are politically feasible? We characterize this literature along two lines: economic factors and political institutions. We then assess the empirical relevance of the models by comparing their implications to stylized social security facts.

Redistribution or Education? The Political Economy of the Social Race

In an overlapping generations model with two social classes, rich and poor, parents of the different social classes vote on two issues: redistributive policies for them and education investment for their children. Public education is the engine for growth through its effect on human capital; but it is also the vehicle through which children born to poor families may exchange their positions with children born to rich families. This is because education reduces the probability of a mismatch, i.e. individuals with low talent but coming from rich families being placed in jobs which should be reserved to people with high talent (and vice-versa). We find a political economy equilibrium of the voting game using probabilistic voting. When the poor are more politically influential, the economy is characterized by higher levels of education, growth and social mobility than under political regimes supported by the rich; pre-tax inequality is greater in the former case, but post-tax is lower.

When the State Mirrors the Family: The Design of Pension Systems

This paper studies the transmission mechanism from family culture to economic institutions, by analyzing the impact of the within family organization on the original design of the public pension systems. We build a simple OLG model with families featuring either weak or strong internal ties. When pensions systems are initially introduced, in society with strong ties they replicate the tight link between generations by providing earnings related benefits; whereas in societies with weak family ties they only act as a safety net. To test this transition mechanism, we consider Todd (1982) historical classification of family types across countries. We find that in societies dominated by absolute nuclear families (i.e., weak family ties), pension systems act as a flat safety net entailing a large within-cohort redistribution, and viceversa in societies characterized by stronger family ties where pension systems are more generous. This link between the type of families and the design of pension systems is robust to testing for alternative explanations, such as legal origin, religion, urbanization and democratization of the country at the time of their introduction. Interestingly, historical family types matter for explaining the design of the pension systems, which represents a persistent feature, but not their size, which have largely changed over time.

Investing for the Old Age: Pensions, Children and Savings

In the last century most countries have experienced both an increase in pension spending and a decline in fertility. The authors argue that the interplay of pension generosity and development of capital markets is crucial to understand fertility decisions. Since children have traditionally represented for parents a form of retirement saving, particularly in economies with limited or non-existent capital markets, an exogenous increase of pension spending provides a saving technology alternative to children, thus relaxing financial (saving) constraints and reducing fertility. The authors build a simple two-period overlapping generations (OLG) model to show that an increase in pensions is associated with a larger decrease in fertility in countries in which individuals have less access to financial markets. Cross-country regression analysis supports result: an interaction between various measures of pension generosity and a proxy for the development of financial markets consistently enters the regressions positively and significantly, suggesting that in economies with limited financial markets, children represent a way for parents to save for old age, and that increases in pensions amount effectively to relaxing these constraints.

Retirement and Social Security in a Probabilistic Voting Model

Why are social security transfers associated with retirement rules? This paper focuses on the political interactions between retirement and social security. Using a probabilistic voting approach, it analyzes why old people are induced to retire in order to receive pension transfers from the young. A crucial hypothesis is that leisure in old age represents a “merit good,” which is positively valued by all agents in the society, young and old. Thus, the politicians choose to tax the labor income of the old, to induce them to retire. Retirement increases the level of ideological homogeneity of the old. In fact, once retired, the elderly are more “single-minded,” since they only care about redistributive issues, such as pensions. This increase in their political power allows them to win the political game and to receive a positive transfer from the young (social security).

Tax Systems and Tax Reforms in Europe

Part One: A General Picture of European Tax Systems and the Main Topics in Tax Reforms 1. A Comparative View of Selected European Countries Luca Gandullia 2. Rationale and Open Issues of more Radical Reforms Luigi Bernardi 3. Public Finance and Political Economies in Tax Design and Reforms Paola Profeta 4. Reducing Fiscal Pressure Under the Stability Pact Fedele De Novellis and Salvatore Parlato Part Two: National Case Studies of European Tax Systems and Tax Reforms Luca Gandullia Co-Editor 5. France Simona Scabrosetti 6. Germany Giorgia C. Maffini 7. Ireland Alessandro Sommacal 8. Italy Luigi Bernardi 9. Spain Davide Tondani 10. The Netherlands Graziano Abrate 11. The United Kingdom Giuseppe Migali

Tax Systems and Tax Reforms in Latin America

FOREWORD Tax systems and tax reforms in Latin America VITO TANZI, PART I A general picture of tax systems and tax reforms in Latin America, 1. Taxation structure and main tax policy issues JUAN CARLOS GoMEZ SABAINI and RICARDO MARTNER, 2. An outline of tax systems and tax reforms FRANCESCO FIGARI and LUCA GANDULLIA, 3. Political economy issues of taxation PAOLA PROFETA and SIMONA SCABROSETTI, 4. Corporate tax systems and policies for attracting FDI GIORGIA MAFFINI and ANNA MARENZI 5. Fiscal Havens in Latin America and the Caribbean JEFFREY OWENS and ALESSANDRA SANELLI PART II Country studies of tax systems and tax reforms in Latin America 6. Argentina MARTIN BeS 7. Brazil JOSe ROBERTO AFONSO and RAFAEL BARROSO 8. Chile MATTEO COMINETTA 9. Colombia LUIGI BERNARDI, ELENA FUMAGALLI and LAURA FUMAGALLI 10. Costa Rica JORGE CORNICK, ERIC THOMPSON and ADRIAN TORREALBA 11. Mexico DANIEL ALVAREZ 12. Paraguay CATERINA FERRARIO 13. Uruguay ALBERTO BARREIX and JERoNIMO ROCA

What Social Security: Beveridgean or Bismarckian?

Why are Bismarckian social security systems associated with larger public pension expenditures, a smaller fraction of private pension and lower income in-equality than Beveridgean systems? These facts are puzzling for political economy theories of social security which predict that Beveridgean systems, involving intra-generational redistribution, should enjoy larger support among low-income people and thus be larger. This paper explains these features in a bidimensional political economy model. In an economy with three income groups, low-income support a large, redistributive system; middle-income favor an earning-related system, while high-income oppose any public system, since they have access to a superior saving technology, a private system. We show that, if income inequality is large, the voting majority of high-income and low-income supports a (small) Beveridgean system, and a large private pillar arises; the opposite occurs with low inequality. Additionally, when the capital market provides higher returns, a Beveridgean system is more likely to emerge.

Aging and Retirement: Evidence Across Countries

How do demographic factors influence retirement? Using a large cross-country data set, I show that in countries with a larger share of elderly in their population the length of retirement is longer. This result holds true if I control for wealth effects, and when the effective labor force participation rate of the elderly is used instead of the official retirement age. Retirement policies and the social security size are strictly related: a new variable, representing the aggregate relevance of retirement policies, turns out to be significant in explaining the size of social security. Finally, the total amount of social security transfers is positively related with the increase of the elderly population, while in per capita terms this relation is not significant.

The Evolution of Retirement

We provide a long term perspective on the individual retirement behavior and on the future of early retirement. In a cross-country sample, we find that total pension spending depends positively on the degree of early retirement and on the share of elderly in the population, which increase the proportion of retirees, but has hardly any effect on the per-capita pension benefits. We show that in a Markovian political economic theoretical framework, in which incentives to retire early are embedded, a political equilibrium is characterized by an increasing sequence of social security contribution rates converging to a steady state and early retirement. Comparative statics suggest that aging and productivity slow-downs lead to higher taxes and more early retirement. However, when income effects are factored in, the model suggests that periods of stagnation — characterized by decreasing labor income — may lead middle aged individuals to postpone retirement.