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Why mandate young borrowers to contribute to their retirement accounts?

Author

Listed:
  • Torben M. Andersen

    (Aarhus University)

  • Joydeep Bhattacharya

    (Iowa State University)

Abstract

Many countries, in an effort to address the problem that many retirees have too little saved up, impose mandatory contributions into retirement accounts, that too, in an age-independent manner. This is puzzling because such funded pension schemes effectively mandate the young, the natural borrowers, to save for retirement. Further, present-biased agents disagree with the intent of such schemes and attempt to undo them by reducing their own saving or even borrowing against retirement wealth. We establish a welfare case for mandating the middle-aged and the young to contribute to their retirement accounts, even with age-independent contribution rates. We find, somewhat counterintuitively, that even though the young responds by borrowing more, that too at a rate higher than offered by pension savings, their lifetime utility increases.

Suggested Citation

  • Torben M. Andersen & Joydeep Bhattacharya, 2021. "Why mandate young borrowers to contribute to their retirement accounts?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(1), pages 115-149, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:joecth:v:71:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s00199-019-01235-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s00199-019-01235-2
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    1. Why mandate young borrowers to contribute to their retirement accounts?
      by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog on 2017-02-22 03:27:57

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    Cited by:

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    2. Sulka, Tomasz, 2022. "Planning and saving for retirement," DICE Discussion Papers 384, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    3. Andersen, Torben M. & Bhattacharya, Joydeep & Grodecka-Messi, Anna & Mann, Katja, 2022. "Pension reform and wealth inequality: evidence from Denmark," Working Paper Series 411, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    4. Torben M. Andersen, 2023. "Pensions and the Nordic Welfare Model," CESifo Working Paper Series 10321, CESifo.
    5. Kyle Hyndman & Alberto Bisin, 2022. "Procrastination, self-imposed deadlines and other commitment devices," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 74(3), pages 871-897, October.
    6. Joydeep Bhattacharya & Monisankar Bishnu & Min Wang, 2023. "Credit Markets with time-inconsistent agents and strategic loan default," Discussion Papers 23-01, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi.
    7. Andersen, Torben M. & Bhattacharya, Joydeep & Grodecka-Messi, Anna & Mann, Katja, 2024. "Pension reform and wealth inequality: Theory and evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    8. Paul Calcott & Vladimir Petkov, 2022. "Excessive consumption and present bias," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 74(1), pages 113-134, July.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mandated pensions; Time inconsistency; Social security; Dynamic efficiency;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H - Public Economics
    • D - Microeconomics
    • D - Microeconomics
    • E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics

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