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Happy retirement?
Kevin Dowd
12 March 2013
1 comment

  The subject of pensions must be one of the most boring imaginable, but one thing that is even less appealing is a long retirement lived out in grinding poverty. Yet all over the developed...
Attempts to eliminate risk can have risky consequences
Philip Booth
11 January 2013
comments

  A thriving economy needs saving and capital investment. Capital investment is inherently risky because it involves making a judgment about returns from entrepreneurial ventures when our...
Clegg is half right on universal old-age benefits
Kristian Niemietz
8 December 2011
2 comments

In very cautious terms, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has questioned the current set of universal benefits for the elderly. This is a major deviation from what has thus far been the coalition...
Why contracting out of the state pension should remain
Philip Booth
20 April 2011
comments

The recently published Green Paper on pensions was widely welcomed. Indeed, it contained some reasonable ideas. However, it also contained a proposal to abolish contracting out of state pensions...
IDS's pension reforms: The Good, the Bad and the Unexplained
Philip Booth
8 March 2011
4 comments

Today's announcement by Iain Duncan Smith that there will be a simple state pension of £140 for all has been widely welcomed. Indeed, the proposals look a little like the...
The seen and the unseen - benefits, and the taxes used to finance them
Philip Booth
3 March 2011
5 comments

This week, Pensions Minister Steve Webb MP described the views of the authors of Sharing the burden - How the older generation should suffer its share of the cuts as “loathsome”. It...
John Hutton’s report on public sector pensions is a step in the right direction – but he needs to go much further
Philip Booth
8 October 2010
2 comments

Yesterday we had the widely-trailed report on reforming public sector pensions. It has been put to me, including on Radio 5 Live, that now is not the time to reform these schemes. This is true. As...
Scrapping the ’statutory retirement age’ – clever spin, but a retrograde step
Mark Littlewood
29 July 2010
7 comments

The coalition government is considering scrapping the fixed retirement age and Minister for Employment Relations, Ed Davey, is promoting the policy on the grounds of choice – You don’t...
Chile’s private pension system has weathered the crisis
Kristian Niemietz
27 July 2010
1 comment

Banker-bashing, hedge-fund bashing, speculator-bashing: one of the legacies of the financial crisis will surely be a hugely negative perception of financial markets. These are now widely...
Economics on the web
Richard Wellings
12 June 2010
1 comment

●  Mark Littlewood discusses cutting public spending on BBC Newsnight (video).   ●  Philip Booth critiques the coalition’s plans on pensions.   ●  James...
Why I have reservations about the “Nudge” philosophy
Philip Booth
9 March 2010
5 comments

I have various reservations about the Nudge philosophy that has been embraced by David Cameron. It is clearly attractive to the Conservatives because it seems novel without appearing to smack of...
The missed-conceptions of the welfare state
Philip Booth
29 June 2009
6 comments

Following on from Richard Wellings’ post on the welfare state and saving, perhaps I can comment on the welfare state and babies. Pay-as-you-go pensions systems rely on children to make...
Harriet Harman, property rights and the rule of law
John Meadowcroft
3 March 2009
2 comments

Irrespective of the moral rights and wrongs of the former Royal Bank of Scotland chief Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension entitlement, the widely reported comment by the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party,...
Demography and the financial crisis
Nick Silver
21 January 2009
12 comments

The Financial Times’ chief economics commentator, Martin Wolf, has put forward a convincing explanation for the ultimate cause of the current financial crisis. To briefly summarise, some...
German think tank confirms fears over UK debt levels
Kristian Niemietz
20 January 2009
8 comments

In a recent IEA discussion paper, Nick Silver argues that official figures display less than a fifth of the UK’s actual public debt. This is because pension entitlements constitute debt in all...
China: the mother of all demographic time bombs
Nick Silver
12 January 2009
6 comments

I argued in a previous blog article that an ageing population is not necessarily problematic provided pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension systems are scaled back. However, there is always an...
How I learned to stop worrying and love the demographic time bomb
Nick Silver
5 December 2008
2 comments

There is a general perception that the ageing population of developed countries will lead to some kind of crisis or demographic “time bomb”. The new IEA monograph Pension Provision:...
The government of Argentina expropriates workers’ pension funds
Kristian Niemietz
21 October 2008
10 comments

Today, the government of Argentina will announce the annulment of the country’s private pension system introduced in 1994. The savings funds of 12 million workers will be nationalised. With...

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