Projects (106)

We analyze the role of employers in establishing suitable labor market conditions to maintain the productivity of workers. We focus on two groups: Disabled and older people. We analyze the employer responsibility to accommodate workers with partial disabilities, and to accommodate older workers in flexible work arrangements until the statutory retirement age or beyond. In the first part of the project, we analyze the…

The number of retirees with a migration background in the Netherlands is larger than ever before (4.3 million), and will continue to rise in the years ahead. Surprisingly little is known about their retirement conditions and preparations (including timing and financial planning). This is worrisome, because many migrants are probably ill-prepared for their retirement, and pension funds may struggle to provide proper choice guidance…

In December 2020, the Dutch government published a pension bill which sets out the main features of a reform of Dutch occupational pensions. A key characteristic is that participants in the new pension contract no longer accumulate pension entitlements but acquire a share in a collective pool of assets. Furthermore, each pension fund must reserve a part of the collective pool of assets as…

The purpose of our project is threefold. First, we review and extend the literature on risk elicitation methods. Our aim is to create a more robust method that generates a measure of risk aversion that depends less on the framing of the questions, background risks and behavioral biases (like, for example, probability weighting or loss aversion). Second, we study how risk preferences are formed…

The project evaluates the sustainability of the state pension systems of major advanced economies using a multi-period overlapping generations (OLG) model. The analysis takes a macroeconomic perspective, grounded on two novel contributions, one methodological, the other quantitative. The quantitative contribution is to provide empirical evidence on the debt limits and the sustainability of the pension systems in the ten largest EU countries (Austria, Belgium,…

This project investigates pension fees in the Netherlands, Poland, Canada, and the United States, focusing on the determinants of low fees. The level of pension fees can have a large effect on pension account balances at retirement. Proper information about the level and structure of fees and charges is crucial for the effective governance of pension plans. It is also valuable to the members…

The goal of this research project is to investigate the scope for devising robust investment strategies that “age well” with participants, taking into account individual preferences, their evolution, and the fact that preference measurements will be noisy. Some focal questions will be the following: Given the potential time consistency problems and the non-negligible individual economic uncertainty, how crucial is personalization of investment strategies for…

There are several important differences between the systems in the Netherlands and in Iceland.  The first pillar is means tested in Iceland and not in the Netherlands; the second pillar mandatory in Iceland but not in the Netherlands and the self-employed end up having a pension because they  have to calculate own wages for tax purposes and pay a pension contribution on that basis….

The division of tasks between pension funds and other pension providers, in particular insurers, consists of rules regarding domain and product demarcation for pension funds. The rules are partly based on EU law; this concerns in particular the rule that a pension fund only carries out activities related to pension (Article 116 of the Pensions Act, the prohibition of ancillary activities, based on Directive…

When switching from an existing benefit scheme to the new Solidaire Premium Agreement (SPO) or the Flexible Premium Agreement (FPO), shares of participants are converted into personal assets. The main question of this research is how communication around this transition can be formed. The main question consists of several sub questions. We distinguish between communication at the time of decision-making (for the funds involved)…