Pension Reform in Latin America: Distributional Principles, Inequalities and Alternative Policy Options

2008 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAMILA ARZA
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Pension System ◽  
Pension Reform ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Structural Reforms ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Income Groups ◽  
Border Policy

AbstractDuring the 1990s a wave of major structural reforms that changed the distributional principles underpinning pension policies spread across Latin America. Outcomes were not always as expected. The implementation of new pension rules in the socio-economic, political and institutional context of Latin America has resulted in a number of inequalities which affect pension system performance and the gains that different income groups and generations may obtain. In order to overcome the distributional drawbacks of reform, Latin American governments may need to afford a new role to non-contributive pensions, as well as consider the application of specific regulatory adjustments to reduce the risks and inequalities involved in the private pillar. Cross-border policy learning may provide useful tools to achieve these aims.

scholarly journals Are Old-age Pension System Reforms Moving Away from Individual Retirement Accounts in Latin America?

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
ESTEBAN CALVO ◽  
FABIO M. BERTRANOU ◽  
EVELINA BERTRANOU
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Pension System ◽  
Pension Reform ◽  
Pension Policy ◽  
Individual Retirement Accounts ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Retirement Accounts

AbstractThis article reviews two rounds of pension reform in ten Latin American countries to determine whether they are moving away from individual retirement accounts (IRAs). Although the idea is provocative, we conclude that the notion of ‘moving away from IRAs’ is insufficient to characterise the new politics of pension reform. As opposed to the politics of enactment of IRAs of the late twentieth century, pension reform in Latin America in recent years has combined significant revival of public components in old-age income maintenance with improvement of IRAs. Clearly, the policy prescriptions that were most influential during the first round of reforms in Latin America have been re-evaluated. The World Bank and other organisations that promoted IRAs have recognised that pension reform should pay more attention to poverty reduction, coverage and equity, and to protect participants from market risks. The experience and challenges faced by countries that introduced IRAs, the changes in policies by international financing institutions, and the recent financial volatility and heavy losses experienced in financial markets may have tempered the enthusiasm of other countries from applying the same type of reforms. Scholars and policy-makers around the globe could benefit from looking closely at these changes in pension policy.

Pension Returns and Popular Support for Neoliberalism in Post-Pension Reform Latin America

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 585-620
Author(s):  
Andrew Kerner
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Opposite Effect ◽  
Pension System ◽  
Pension Reform ◽  
Financial Capital ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Public Preferences ◽  
Multiple Datasets ◽  
Capital Ownership

Latin American pension reforms during the 1990s dramatically increased the number of people in the region who had a direct stake in the returns on financial capital. This article asks: How, if at all, has this expansion affected Latin American politics? It focuses particularly on popular attitudes towards neoliberalism. It argues that government-induced expansions of capital ownership do not directly affect public preferences about neoliberalism, but did so indirectly by shaping the information that people use to judge whether neoliberalism is welfare enhancing. According to this view, participation in a reformed Latin American pension system should lead to acceptance of neoliberalism when pensions returns are high, but have the opposite effect when returns are low. This study analyzes multiple datasets of Latin American survey data and finds support for this theory.

scholarly journals Postneoliberalism as institutional recalibration: Reading Polanyi through Argentina’s soy boom

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 216-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Berndt ◽  
Marion Werner ◽  
Víctor Ramiro Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Economic Geography ◽  
Capital Flows ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Double Movement ◽  
Movement Type ◽  
Societal Reaction ◽  
Fictitious Commodities

While postneoliberalism is often interpreted as a societal reaction against the deleterious effects of marketization in Latin America, this paper develops a finer-grained Polanyian institutional analysis to gain better analytical purchase on the ambivalent outcomes of postneoliberal reforms. Drawing on recent insights in economic geography, and in dialogue with the Latin American structuralist tradition, we elaborate our framework through a case study of the Argentinian soy boom of the 2000s, identifying forms of market extension, redistribution, reciprocity and householding that facilitated this process. We argue for a multi-scalar approach that balances attention to national and extra-local dynamics shaping the combination of these forms, identified through the lens of the “fictitious commodities” of the soy boom: money (credit, currency and cross-border capital flows), land (in the agricultural heartland and frontier regions), labor (transformed and excluded in a “farming without farmers” model) and, we add, knowledge (biotech). Our analysis identifies internal tensions as well as overt resistance and “overflow” that ultimately led to the collapse of postneoliberal regulation of the soy complex, ushering in a wider, market-radical counter-movement. Refracting double-movement-type dynamics through the prism of heterodox institutional forms, we argue, allows for a better grasp of processes that underlie institutional recalibrations of progressive and regressive kinds.

Business Interests, Conservative Economists, and the Expansion of Noncontributory Pensions in Latin America

2020 ◽  
pp. 003232922095226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Dorlach
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Pension Reform ◽  
Pension Policy ◽  
Business Interests ◽  
Incentive Compatible ◽  
Private Providers ◽  
Conservative Policy ◽  
Latin American Countries

Since the 1990s, most Latin American countries have significantly expanded noncontributory pension programs. In explaining this wave of expansion, research has focused on the protagonism of left parties and social movements and on electoral competition, generally disregarding the roles of organized business and conservative policy experts. This article demonstrates, through a detailed analysis of Chile’s 2008 noncontributory pension reform, that conservative economists played active roles in formulating a noncontributory pension policy characterized by moderate, targeted, and “incentive-compatible” benefits and financed by the general budget. The conservative design of the program facilitated broad support from employers and private pension funds, critical for the eventual passage of the reform. The analysis illustrates the need to incorporate business interests into explanations of welfare state reforms in Latin America and the broader Global South, in particular by distinguishing the interests of employers and private providers and by focusing on their interaction with conservative policy experts.

Learn from elsewhere: A relational geography of policy learning in Bangkok’s Creative District

2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2110400
Author(s):  
Napong Tao Rugkhapan
Keyword(s):  
Policy Learning ◽  
Policy Intervention ◽  
Selective Perception ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Policy Ideas ◽  
Border Policy ◽  
To Come ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City ◽  
At Home

The article investigates Charoengkrung Creative District as a site of cross-border policy learning. Heralded as Thailand's first creative district and a “prototype” for many more to come, Charoenkrung Creative District promises to rejuvenate the city through a participatory, broad-based approach. Rather than analyzing the creative district as a local intervention, the article foregrounds the transnational character of policymaking. It shows that while the policy intervention is local, it is globally inspired by the imaginaries of “successful” elsewheres. The paper analyzes the state's discourse of creativity as a global–local negotiation, whereby the local understanding of creativity is contingent upon (and therefore curtailed by) its selective perception of foreign successes. Building upon the notion of assemblage, it points to a collage of policy ideas and imaginaries of success, which are mobilized to promote the vision of the creative district at home.

Privatization of pension system in Chile and formation of new pension orthodoxy

2019 ◽  
pp. 40-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis V. Melnik ◽  
Mikhail I. Miryakov
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Pension System ◽  
Pension Reform ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
Actual Performance ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Pension Systems ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
The World

In 1981 in Chile the Pinochet regime reformed the state-led PAYG pension system into the private pension system. Chilean experiment attracted the attention of both politicians and experts around the world and laid the foundations for the new pension orthodoxy. As a result, more than 30 countries (mostly in Latin America and in the former Soviet bloc) followed the Chilean model and privatized pension systems. The paper considers the design and results of the Chilean pension reform. The aim of the paper is to show the specific path of transformation of theoretical concepts into actual economic policy. The research provides two key results. The first is that although pension reforms of recent decades were influenced by the ideas of liberalism, their design and implementation in fact suited the pattern of the new paternalism characteristic of “neoliberalism”. The second is that implementation of the Chilean model in other countries was due to the persuasiveness of the discourse of the new pension orthodoxy rather than to actual performance of the Chilean pension system.

Self-Organization Among Delivery Platforms Workers in Neoliberal Latin American Countries. The Cases of Peru and Chile

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Karol Morales Muñoz ◽  
Alejandra Dinegro Martinez
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Labor Process ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Grassroots Organizations ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Latin American Countries ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract Recently in Latin America, numerous mobilizations of workers against the precariousness of work in delivery platforms have been developed. In this study, we argue that consolidation into strong organizations for defending platform workers’ interests is strongly related to the socio-political and institutional contexts they are involved in. Drawn upon the understanding of solidarity among workers as a phenomenon rooted in the labor process, as well as the relevance of socio-political and institutional context for the organizing processes among precarious workers, this study addresses the cases of self-organization of platforms deliverers in Chile and Peru. Based on ethnographic research, the results show common characteristics of workers’ self-organization, which are related to similar labor processes in delivery platforms. In addition, results shed light on the relevance of the socio-political and institutional context in providing resources for the consolidation of grassroots organizations, especially after platform counter-actions.

Testing the Assumptions concerning the Effects of the German Pension Reform Based on Latin American and Eastern European Outcomes

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 285-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmelo Mesa-Lago ◽  
Eva Maria Hohnerlein
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Pension Reform ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Private Pensions ◽  
Social Reforms ◽  
Pension Reforms ◽  
Investment Returns ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
Pension Contribution

The pension reform, approved in Germany in 2001, and implemented on January 1, 2002, has been described by the Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, Walter Riester, as ‘one of the greatest social reforms this country has seen’ (Federal Ministry, 2002a) and it has prompted considerable discussion and publications. This article analyses key assumptions on the effects of the German reform in the light of two decades of experience with structural pension reforms (‘privatisation’) in Latin America. This region has pioneered this type of reform and has influenced both the international debate and changes in other regions such as Eastern Europe. The article has four objectives: (1) to elaborate a taxonomy of old-age structural pension reforms in the world and place Germany's within it; (2) to identify and analyse crucial assumptions related to the effects of the German reform (incentives for affiliation, competition and administrative costs, impact on the level of pensions, sustainability of the public pension contribution ceiling, and effects on national saving, fiscal costs, the capital market and investment returns); (3) to contrast those German assumptions that are similar to their counterparts in Latin America with data collected on real outcomes from the pension reforms in several countries of that region and, to a lesser extent, from a few Eastern European countries (the two regions combined embrace more than 80 million insured persons in private pensions); and (4) to summarise our findings and draw some useful lessons. Economic, social security and other differences between Germany and the countries compared will be taken into account in the analysis.

Globalization and Pension Reform in Latin America

2007 ◽  
Vol 49 (04) ◽  
pp. 31-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah M. Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Capital Flows ◽  
Pension Reform ◽  
Double Bind ◽  
Financial Globalization ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Pension Systems

Abstract While financial globalization has created powerful incentives for Latin American governments to privatize old age pension systems, reliance on short-term capital flows has also constrained the ability of cash-strapped governments to enact that reform. Analysis of the technocratic process of pension reform in Argentina and Brazil provides evidence. Instead of simply generating unidirectional pressures for structural pension reform, financial globalization has created a double bind for Latin America's capital-scarce governments, fostering long-term incentives to privatize pension systems while heightening the risk of punishment in the short term.

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