IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_1064.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Hayek Pension: An efficient minimum pension to complement the welfare state

Author

Listed:
  • Jakob von Weizsäcker

Abstract

A means tested minimum income for old age creates an incentive for some not to save for old age and instead to free ride. Recent literature is undecided to what extent this inefficient savings distortion should be addressed by a compulsory pension system because resulting labour-leisure distortions could be even worse. In a simple optimal taxation framework we show that it is Pareto improving to fully eliminate the savings distortion by means of a compulsory pension termed “Hayek pension” that decreases with after-tax lifetime earnings, with zero pension benefits for middle and high incomes. A combination of the Hayek pension and the contribution dependent Bismarck pension is found to be superior to the tax financed flat benefit Beverage pension.

Suggested Citation

  • Jakob von Weizsäcker, 2003. "The Hayek Pension: An efficient minimum pension to complement the welfare state," CESifo Working Paper Series 1064, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1064
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp1064.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Olivia S. Mitchell, 1999. "New Evidence on the Money's Worth of Individual Annuities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1299-1318, December.
    2. Homburg, Stefan, 2000. "Compulsory savings in the welfare state," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 233-239, August.
    3. Cremer, Helmuth & Pestieau, Pierre, 1998. "Social insurance, majority voting and labor mobility," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 397-420, June.
    4. Feldstein, Martin S, 1987. "Should Social Security Benefits Be Means Tested?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(3), pages 468-484, June.
    5. Martin Feldstein, 1985. "The Optimal Level of Social Security Benefits," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(2), pages 303-320.
    6. David Laibson, 1997. "Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 443-478.
    7. Robert Fenge & Jakob Weizsäcker, 2001. "Compulsory Savings: Efficiency and Redistribution On the Interaction of Means Tested Basic Income and Public Pensions," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 8(4), pages 637-652, August.
    8. Lindbeck, Assar & Weibull, Jorgen W, 1988. "Altruism and Time Consistency: The Economics of Fait Accompli," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(6), pages 1165-1182, December.
    9. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pierre Pestieau & Uri Possen, 2008. "Prodigality And Myopia—Two Rationales For Social Security," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 76(6), pages 629-652, December.
    2. Erin Cottle Hunt & Frank N. Caliendo, 2022. "Social security and risk sharing: A survey of four decades of economic analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(5), pages 1591-1609, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert Fenge & Jakob Weizsäcker, 2001. "Compulsory Savings: Efficiency and Redistribution On the Interaction of Means Tested Basic Income and Public Pensions," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 8(4), pages 637-652, August.
    2. Erin Cottle Hunt & Frank N. Caliendo, 2022. "Social security and risk sharing: A survey of four decades of economic analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(5), pages 1591-1609, December.
    3. T. Findley & Frank Caliendo, 2008. "The behavioral justification for public pensions: a survey," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 32(4), pages 409-425, October.
    4. Robert Fenge & Jakob von Weizsäcker, 1999. "To what Extent are Public Pensions Pareto-improving? On the Interaction of Means Tested Basic Income and Public Pensions," CESifo Working Paper Series 197, CESifo.
    5. Guo, Nick L. & Caliendo, Frank N., 2014. "Time-inconsistent preferences and time-inconsistent policies," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 102-108.
    6. András Simonovits, 2015. "Socially optimal contribution rate and cap in a proportional (DC) pension system," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 14(1), pages 45-63, December.
    7. Börsch-Supan, A. & Härtl, K. & Leite, D.N., 2016. "Social Security and Public Insurance," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 781-863, Elsevier.
    8. Manuel Amador & Iván Werning & George-Marios Angeletos, 2006. "Commitment vs. Flexibility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(2), pages 365-396, March.
    9. Homburg, Stefan, 2000. "A Social Security Fallacy," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 89(2/3), pages 409-419.
    10. Christian Moser & Pedro Olea de Souza e Silva, 2019. "Optimal Paternalistic Savings Policies," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 17, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    11. Karin Mayr, 2003. "Immigration and Majority Voting on Income Redistriubtion-Is there a Case for Opposition from Natives?," Economics working papers 2003-08, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    12. Amihai Glazer & Hiroki Kondo, 2010. "Governmental Transfers Can Reduce a Moral Hazard Problem," Working Papers 101102, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    13. Blumkin, Tomer & Ruffle, Bradley J. & Ganun, Yosef, 2012. "Are income and consumption taxes ever really equivalent? Evidence from a real-effort experiment with real goods," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 1200-1219.
    14. Stefan Homburg, 2006. "Coping with Rational Prodigals: A Theory of Social Security and Savings Subsidies," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 73(289), pages 47-58, February.
    15. Cremer, Helmuth & Pestieau, Pierre, 2011. "Myopia, redistribution and pensions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 165-175, February.
    16. Andras Simonovits, 2013. "A family of simple paternalistic transfer models," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 1324, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    17. Brown, Jeffrey R., 2001. "Private pensions, mortality risk, and the decision to annuitize," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 29-62, October.
    18. Helmuth Cremer & Philippe Donder & Dario Maldonado & Pierre Pestieau, 2008. "Designing a linear pension scheme with forced savings and wage heterogeneity," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 15(5), pages 547-562, October.
    19. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    20. Raj Chetty & Amy Finkelstein, 2012. "Social Insurance: Connecting Theory to Data," NBER Working Papers 18433, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1064. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.