Suchergebnisse

We analyze the political stability of capital funded social security. In particular, using a stylized theoretical framework we study the mechanisms behind governments capturing pension assets in order to lower current taxes. This is followed by an analysis of the analogous mechanisms in a fully-edged overlapping generations model with intra-cohort heterogeneity. Funding is efficient in a Kaldor-Hicks sense. Individuals vote on capturing the accumulated pension assets and replacing the funded pension pillar with a pay-as-you-go scheme. We show that even if capturing assets reduces welfare in the long run, it always has sufficient political support from those alive at the moment of the vote.

The article reviews international experience of the pension reform switching from PAYG pension system toward funded or mixed ones. Issues related to reception of new institutions and changes in institutional environment are considered, recommendations on correction of the Russian pension system are formulated. Global experience shows that funded pension systems were successfully introduced either by democratic political regimes based on consensus or by dictatorships using authoritarian methods. In the latter case, reform plans were corrected as implementation proceeded. Stability of the reformed pension system strongly depends on its transparency and protection mechanisms for employees and employers built within the system. Funded pension system brings higher formal employment but creates new administrative barriers and transaction costs, increasing stability but reducing flexibility of the social insurance system.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical overview of efficiency and equity and give insights in the Croatian health system. Using selected indicators, a basic descriptive review of efficiency and equity in the Croatian health system was made, with an added comparison to other countries of the European Union. Observed at the macro level, Croatia shows relatively good efficiency of its health system, even above the average of the comparable countries by health expenditure per capita, but still significantly below the most developed EU countries. Still, Croatia requires further reforms that would enhance the efficiency of its health system (especially at the hospital level), without sacrificing equity which is a fundamental right of all citizens in need of health care. Although in total only small proportion of the population perceived an unmet need for health care, Croatia reported much larger inequalities in unmet need among different socio-economic groups, between high and low educated population, between women and men and among different age groups.

This article analyses the implications of switching from unfunded to funded pension systems. It is plausible that inthe long runand onaveragepeople would be better off if pensions were funded. But in the transition from an unfunded to a funded scheme funds need to be accumulated and that requires national saving to be higher. While deficit financing can, under certain circumstances, help spread the burden of the transition across generations the scale of extra debt that might be needed in many European countries is problematic in the context of Monetary Union. Ultimately, it is likely to prove hard to make significant headway towards greater funding of pensions in Europe without some people being worse off. The task is harder the more generous are existing state pensions, the more rapid is the ageing of the population and the more constrained is the government in using deficit financing. Given all this the UK is in a relatively good position (vis a vis rest of Europe) to complete a transition which, arguably, began almost twenty years ago. Things are much tougher on the Continent.But there are more than transitional issues. Unfunded pension schemes can help people insure against shocks that affect particular generations and because such schemes often involve intra-generational redistribution (because linkage between contributions made and pensions subsequently received is often quite low), as well as inter-generational transfers, they can help compensate for missing insurance markets. A key question for those who advocate a complete move to funded schemes is how the redistributive and insurance roles that are played, to varying extents, by state-run, unfunded pension schemes could be achieved by other means.

Allocating on the basis of need is a distinguishing principle in publicly funded health care systems. Resources ought to be directed to patients, or the health program, where the need is considered greatest. In Sweden support of this principle can be found in health care legislation. Today however some domains of what appear to be health care needs are excluded from the responsibilities of the publicly funded health care system. Corrections of eye disorders known as refractive errors is one such domain. In this article the moral legitimacy of this exception is explored. Individuals with refractive errors need spectacles, contact lenses or refractive surgery to do all kinds of thing, including participating in everyday activities, managing certain jobs, and accomplishing various goals in life. The relief of correctable visual impairments fits well into the category of what we typically consider a health care need. The study of refractive errors does belong to the field of medical science, interventions to correct such errors can be performed by medical means, and the skills of registered health care professionals are required when it comes to correcting refractive error. As visual impairments caused by other conditions than refractive errors are treated and funded within the public health care system in Sweden this is an inconsistency that needs to be addressed.