Description

Substituting a fully-funded system for a pay-as-you-go regime provides potential efficiency gains in factor markets, can contribute to higher saving, and hence could raise growth. But pension reformers face significant uncertainty about the size and timing of these benefits. This paper sheds light on this issue in two directions. First it reviews recent world-wide empirical and simulations evidence on pension systems and reforms to infer about the likely factor market benefits and potential saving effects of pension reform and their quantitative implications for growth. Then new evidence is provided for Chile, the country with the oldest and most radical pension reform to date. The results suggest that Chile's pension reform has improved labor-market performance and raised saving, investment, and factor productivity, contributing to a quarter of the country's growth increase.