1,720,962 research outputs found
Reforming pensions in Europe: a comparative country analysis
No full textThis contribution assesses the impact of the economic crisis on European pension systems and provides a comparative overview of the measures imposed on European pension systems, together with their effects.
Focussing on eight countries (representative of different pension models) the study shows that these countries applied a similar two-step strategy in response to the crisis. After introducing anti-cyclical measures in the first years (2009-10), they all moved later (2010-12 and on) to austerity measures trying to improve the financial viability of pensions (e.g. revised indexation, an increase in the retirement age or a stricter link between contributions and benefits)
Reforming pensions in Europe: a comparative country analysis
Get PDFThis contribution assesses the impact of the economic crisis on European pension systems and provides a comparative overview of the measures imposed on European pension systems, together with their effects.
Focussing on eight countries (representative of different pension models) the study shows that these countries applied a similar two-step strategy in response to the crisis. After introducing anti-cyclical measures in the first years (2009-10), they all moved later (2010-12 and on) to austerity measures trying to improve the financial viability of pensions (e.g. revised indexation, an increase in the retirement age or a stricter link between contributions and benefits)
La riforma delle pensioni in Italia e nel Sud Europa: cambiamento e tensioni persistenti
No full textReassessing South European pensions after the crisis : evidence from two decades of reforms
No full textThe article studies pension reforms in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain between 1990 and 2013, focusing on three dimensions of change: multi-pillarisation, institutional harmonisation, and spending trends (cost-containment/expansion). The pension evolution of these countries is reassessed throughout the period of crisis and austerity. All countries encouraged the spread of private pensions and harmonised their fragmented public schemes. Cost containment was massive, putting future adequacy at risk. While international actors, especially the European Union, acquired a stronger role, that of organised labour declined. Spiralling between crisis and austerity, these systems changed and adapted, but still face old and new problems: inequality, risk individualisation, and increasing vulnerability to external shocks
Le pensioni categoriali in Italia: legislazione e messa in opera del nuovo sistema multi-pilastro
No full textIl presente capitolo cerca di ricostruire il percorso attraverso
cui il nuovo paradigma «multi-pilastro» è stato definito
e implementato negli ultimi decenni. Il focus è centrato
sul contenuto delle misure (policy output) e sui loro effetti
(policy outcome). Brevi cenni alle riforme degli ultimi anni
introdurranno l’analisi della concreta implementazione delle
nuove misure e dello spazio guadagnato fino a oggi dalla
previdenza complementare. Al di là degli obiettivi sanciti
dai decisori politici, il nuovo assetto «multi-pilastro» ha
fatto fatica ad affermarsi. La riforma delle pensioni appare,
infatti, come un caso di implementation gap: la previdenza
integrativa copre a tutt’oggi una minoranza di lavoratori,
con forti differenze tra settori occupazionali, classi di età e
genere
The politics of a broken promise : risk shifting reforms in Bismarckian pension policies
Get PDFDefence date: 21 January 2015Examining Board: Professor Sven Steinmo, EUI (Supervisor); Professor Alexander H. Trechsel, EUI; Professor David Natali, University of Bologna; Professor Kent Weaver, Georgetown University.This thesis deals with a broken promise: namely, a broken pension promise. Looking at Italy and Germany in particular, it tells a story that is fairly common to retirement systems across the OECD. Over the last forty years, pension institutions have been facing major economic and demographic challenges. This 'affordability crisis' has slowly eroded the confidence of large segments of the population in the old pension contract, while paving the way for the anti-welfare rhetoric and initiatives of more than a conservative policy entrepreneur. Cost containment reforms took root and clamped down on pension spending and, what is more, on public responsibility for individual welfare after quiescence. As a result, pension income is lower and riskier now than was expected when today's pensioners entered the labour market. Most notably, it will be even more meagre and uncertain for tomorrow's retirees. By comparing the Italian and German reform patterns, this thesis suggests that answering the puzzle requires focusing on two sets of interrelated transformations: the prominence of so-called 'systemic risks' and the changing ways of political representation. Risks hereby defined as 'systemic'first emerged in Western political economies in the 1970s, only to turn into a recurring malaise during the following decades (Streeck 2011). Unlike the risks central to the post-war welfare state model, they far outreach the individual level, being borne by the community or by society as a whole. Furthermore, those risks proved somehow resilient to traditional means of public intervention and management. Systemic risks, in sum, have originated a distinctive combination of functional and political effects, ultimately providing a functional as well as a political rationale to risk shifting reforms. Again, since the 1970s political representation has also changed. On the one side, the traditional mass party model has been replaced by new organisational forms, while new parties and party families have emerged, activating novel issues and cleavages. On the other side, industrial representation in the corporate arena changed as well, becoming less organised all over the industrialised world. Systemic risks, then, have further influenced transformations in both the electoral and the corporate arenas, further eroding the political consensus for expanding social responsibility and socialising risks. It was, in other words, the co-evolution of problems and politics (to put it in Kingdon's terms) to lead popular and strongly institutionalised pension systems to challenge the basic tenets of their pension promises, although this common story played out very differently across different countries as a result of the action of national institutional filters (policy legacies and the functioning of the electoral and corporate arenas)
Italy and Denmark from Early Retirement to Active Ageing. Problems and Solutions for Structural Unemployment and Pension Funding
No full textThe article compares the sequences of labour market and pension reforms enacted in Denmark and Italy between 1992 and 2007. In both countries, a common focus on the link between old age insurance and labour market policies fostered a shift from a paradigm based on early retirement and generous benefits to a new one based on active ageing and fairer entitlements within a multi-pillar pension system. What might account for these commonalities?
Following the logic of a most-different systems design, the article looks at the institutional and political mechanisms at work in both cases and suggests three main claims. First, efficiency-enhancing reforms may find a political starter in the interaction between the cleavage structure prevailing in the country and the ability of some political actors to exploit issue ownership on the policies in question. Second, labour market reforms with positive effects on economic output may be more beneficial to the pension system than a major institutional reengineering. Third, the institutional tension between the goals of status maintenance and redistribution may trigger multi-pillarization in systems where occupational fragmentation is strong. Occupationalism, while producing increasing electoral returns, also generates inconsistencies that require a more articulated distribution of tasks among different pillar
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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