Intergenerational risk sharing in closing pension funds

Abstract

We model intergenerational risk sharing in closing funded pension plans. Specifically, we consider a setting in which in each period, the pension fund's investment and indexation policy is the outcome of a bargaining process between representatives of the then living generations. Because some generations might be under- or overrepresented in the board, we use the asymmetric Nash bargaining solution to allow for differences in bargaining powers. In a numerical study, we compare the welfare that the generations derive from the outcome of this repeated bargaining to the welfare that they would derive if a social planner's optimal policy would instead be implemented. We find that as compared to the social optimum, older generations benefit substantially from the repeated bargaining, even if all generations are equally well-represented in the board. If older generations are relatively over-represented, as is sometimes argued, these effects are attenuated.