Who gains from trade reform? Some remaining puzzles

Who gains from trade reform ? Some remaining puzzles

This paper focuses on three unresolved issues with regard to the impact of trade reform. First, many studies linking trade reform to long run growth are surprisingly fragile. To illustrate the problems with this literature, we examine a popular measure of openness w recently introduced by Sachs and Warner Sachs, J., Warner, A., 1995. Economic reform and the process of global integration. Brooki...

The Gains from Pension Reform

We characterize pension systems along three dimensions: 1) actuarial vs. nonactuarial, 2) funded vs. pay-as-you-go, 3) defined-contribution vs. defined-benefit. Increasing the degree of actuarial fairness, by strengthening the linkage between contributions and benefits, reduces labor market distortions and may increase welfare in a Pareto-efficiency sense. Increasing the degree of funding impli...

Measurable Dynamic Gains from Trade

What Are the Gains from Pension Reform ?

This paper presents a unified analytical framework for the analysis of social security reform. It discusses reform along two dimensions: Pay-As-You-Go versus fully funded on the one hand, and actuarial versus non-actuarial on the other. Making the system more actuarial entails a trade-off between less distorted work incentives and intra-generational redistribution. Increasing the degree of fund...

Volatility, Insurance, and the Gains from Trade∗

By reducing the negative correlation between local prices and productivity shocks, trade liberalization changes the volatility of returns. In the context of agriculture in developing countries—where production is risky, producers are risk averse, and insurance markets are incomplete—this change in volatility may have large welfare effects. In this paper, we empirically, analytically, and quanti...