Design Choices in Privatized Social-Security Systems: Learning from the Swedish Experience

Although there is a large literature in economics on the design of social-security systems, most of that literature is concerned with macroeconomic considerations such as funding. In contrast, there has been much less attention devoted to the details of how plans might be designed, in part because t...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American economic review 2004-05, Vol.94 (2), p.424-428
Main Authors: Cronqvist, Henrik, Thaler, Richard H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Advertising campaigns
Asset allocation
Case studies
Default fund
Design
Designers
Economic models
Economics
Fees
Financial investments
Financial portfolios
Index funds
Investment risk
Investors
Libertarianism
Market entry
Market share
Market shares
Memos to the Council of Behavioral-Economics Advisors
Privatization
Social security
Stocks
Sweden
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Although there is a large literature in economics on the design of social-security systems, most of that literature is concerned with macroeconomic considerations such as funding. In contrast, there has been much less attention devoted to the details of how plans might be designed, in part because these details do not seem important from a standard economic perspective. This paper reverses this usual pattern and focuses the attention on the design aspects of the Swedish plan. It is found that, although most of the design choices are those that might be approved by most economists, in some cases these choices produces undesirable consequences.
ISSN:0002-8282
1944-7981
DOI:10.1257/0002828041301632