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The Implicit Pension Debt: Its Meaning and an International Comparison - Il debito pensionistico: significato e confronti internazionali

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We discuss the meaning of the concept of implicit pension debt (unfunded pension liabilities) from a public finance perspective and contrast different definitions such a variable with the notion of public debt. We conclude that the implicit pension debt is deeply different from public debt but nevertheless is meaningful for economic policy. We compute the implicit pension debt associated to retired workers for several countries for different years adopting a homogeneous algorithm. Our results show that the major countries have implicit pension debt of very different size with different trends in the last few years. - Il lavoro discute il significato del concetto di debito pensionistico implicito da una prospettiva di finanza pubblica e confronta diverse definizioni di tale variabile con la nozione di debito pubblico. Giungiamo alla conclusione che il debito pensionistico è profondamente diverso dal debito pubblico ma che esso è comunque significativo per la politica economica. Stimiamo il debito pensionistico associato alle persone già in pensione per diversi Paesi e per diversi anni utilizzando un algoritmo omogeneo. I risultati mostrano che i principali Paesi hanno debiti pensionistici di dimensioni molto diverse con diverse dinamiche negli anni recenti.

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  • Beltrametti, Luca & Della Valle, Matteo, 2012. "The Implicit Pension Debt: Its Meaning and an International Comparison - Il debito pensionistico: significato e confronti internazionali," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 65(1), pages 15-38.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:ecoint:0636
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Implicit Debt; Pension Liabilities; Sovereign Debt;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt

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