The classic Aaron–Samuelson result argues that pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension schemes cannot coexist with higher-return, private, retirement-saving schemes. The ensuing literature shows if agents voluntarily undersave for retirement due to myopia or time-inconsistency, then a paternalistic, rationale for PAYG pensions arises only if voluntary retirement saving is fully crowded out because of a binding borrowing constraint. This paper generalizes the discussion to the reference-dependent utility setup of Kőszegi and Rabin (2009) where undersaving happens naturally. No borrowing constraint is imposed. We show it is possible to offer a non-paternalistic, welfare rationale for return-dominated, PAYG pensions to coexist with private, retirement saving.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/joydeep_bhattacharya/78/
This article is published as Andersen, Torben M., Joydeep Bhattacharya, and Qing Liu. "Reference‐dependent preferences, time inconsistency, and pay‐as‐you‐go pensions." Economic Inquiry 59, no. 3 (2021): 1008-1030. doi:10.1111/ecin.12972.