Social Security Reform

Robin Brooks is an economist in the Financial Studies Division of the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. His research focuses on the growing importance of financial linkages across countries and their implications for risk reduction strategies in portfolio management. Before joining the IMF, Dr Brooks was a Research Fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, where he studied the effects of population aging on financial markets. Assaf Razin is the Mario-Henrique Simonsen Professor of Public Economics at Tel Aviv University and the Friedman Professor of International Economics at Cornell University. He is particularly known for his work on human capital growth, the economics of the family, public economics and international economics. Professor Razin has co-authored numerous books, including Fiscal Policies and Growth in the World Economy, Labor, Capital, and Finance: International Flows (Cambridge University Press, 2001), and the forthcoming The Decline of the Welfare State: Political Economics of Aging, Migration and Globalization.

• Preface; Contributors; Introduction Robin Brooks and Assaf Razin; Part I. Aging Populations and the Need for Social Security Reform: 1. The joint Japanese, EU, and US demographic transitions - the roles of capital flows, immigration, and policy Hans Fehr, Sabine Jokisch and Laurence Kotlikoff; 2. Will Social Security and Medicare remain viable as the US population is aging? An update Henning Bohn; Part II. Undersaving as a Rationale for Mandatory Social Security Programs: 3. Self-control and saving for retirement David Laibson, Andrea Repetto and Jeremy Tobacman; Part III. Investing Public Pensions in the Stock Market: 4. Social Security investment in equities Peter Diamond and John Geanakoplos; 5. Investing public pensions in the stock market: implications for risk sharing, capital formation, and public policy in the developed and developing world Deborah Lucas; 6. The risk-sharing implications of alternative social security arrangements Kjetil Storesletten, Chris Telmer, and Amir Yaron; Part IV. Financial Markets and Social Security Reform: 7. Asset market effects of the baby boom and Social Security reform Robin Brooks; 8. Demographic structure and asset returns James Poterba; 9. Will bequests attenuate the predicted meltdown in stock prices when baby boomers retire? Andrew Abel; Part V. Political Economy Aspects of Social Security Reform: 10. Aging and the private versus public pension controversy: a political-economy perspective Assaf Razin and Efraim Sadka; 11. How would you like to reform your pension system? The opinions of German and Italian citizens Tito Boeri, Axel-Boersch-Supan, and Guido Tabellini; Index.

Review of the hardback: 'This volume is a valuable collection of essays … authored by some of the foremost experts in the field, providing sophisticated research techniques as well as a well-rounded international perspective on the debate over social security reform. the book is well organized, providing arguments that are both cohesive and highly readable.' Journal of PEF