Person:
Holzmann, Robert
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Public Finance,
Pension Strategy
Degrees
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
February 1, 2023
Biography
Robert Holzmann is elected fellow of Austrian Academy
of Sciences and as of September 2019 governor of the
Austrian Central Bank. He held academic positions in
Austria, Australia, Germany and Malaysia, senior
economist positions at OECD and IMF, and senior
management positions at the World Bank where he was
leading the pension strategy work. He has published 37
books and some 200 articles on financial, fiscal and social
policy issues. He has travelled to over 90 countries in the
world.
Publication Search Results
1 - 7 of 7
-
Publication
Pension Reform in Europe : Process and Progress
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003)Pension reform is an important topic, high on the agendas of most European countries, where countries are profoundly affected by an aging population, the result of lower fertility, and increased life expectancy, changes in family structure, and the effects of globalization. The book presents seven papers on the political economy of European pension reform, where clearly, major reforms are needed, to ensure the sustainability of retirement income systems. However, reform programs will need to combine measures to delay retirement; introduce changes in the benefit structure; and, diversify the sources of retirement income, to better balance individuals' risks. Subjects address the need to accelerate the European pension reform agenda, and compares the making of pension privatization in Latin America with that in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, subjects look at democracy and structural pension reform in continental Europe, focusing on the aging population, the electoral behavior, and early retirement impacts, on the basis of commitment, and consensus - or the lack thereof - to pension reform. Most interestingly, one of the subjects questions, and further analyzes, the wide differences of social policy models among transition economies, to finalize with a look at the diffusion of pension innovation. These subjects provide insight into the process, and progress of European pension reform, to the benefit of the reform agenda in other regions as well. -
Publication
Pension Reform : Issues and Prospects for Non-Financial Defined Contribution Schemes
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006)The previous decade has been one of pension reform throughout the world. In high income countries, the driving force has been the threat that current systems will become unaffordable in coming decades, with demographic developments presenting a major risk. In another setting, countries in the process of transition from a command, to a market economy are confronted with the challenge of introducing a public pension system that will provide social security in old age, but that also supports the fundamentals of a market economy. In the latter sense, it is important to examine carefully the experiences of developed market economies. Even in these countries, the driving force behind reform is demographic change and affordability. In a third setting, middle and lower-middle income countries are faced with the question of what system will best serve the interests of their specific country goals for the future. In all of these settings "NDC"-non-financial defined contribution-pension schemes have been on the agenda in discussions of possible options. Sweden is one of the few countries to have implemented an NDC scheme in the 1990s, when NDC came into its own as a concept, implemented in four European Union (EU) countries (Italy, Latvia, and Poland are the other three). NDC has become a reform option considered by many countries, understandably since most of Europe has a pay-as-you-go tradition, and NDC constitutes a new way to "organize" a mandatory, universal pay-as-you-go pension system. With some experience of NDC schemes implemented, it is felt particularly relevant for Sweden to host a conference devoted to discussing both the conceptual and institutional aspects of NDC. The goal was even more ambitious, however: to contribute to creating a synthesis of current knowledge on this new topic. This book is the realization of that goal. It comprises discussion papers on the status of NDC, its concept and the reform strategies that follow. Papers also discuss the conceptual issues of design and implementation , lessons from countries with NDC contribution schemes, and finalizes on the potential of NDC contribution schemes in other countries' reforms. -
Publication
Assessing Benefit Portability for International Migrant Workers: A Review of the Germany-Turkey Bilateral Social Security Agreement
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-05)The portability of social benefits is gaining importance given the increasing share of individuals working at least part of their life outside their home country. Bilateral social security agreements (BSSAs) are considered a crucial approach to establishing portability, but the functionality and effectiveness of these agreements have not yet been investigated; thus importance guidance for policy makers in migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries is missing. To shed light on how BSSAs work in practice, this document is part of a series providing information and lessons from studies of portability in four diverse but comparable corridors: Austria-Turkey, Germany-Turkey, Belgium-Morocco, and France-Morocco. A summary policy paper draws broader conclusions and offers overarching policy recommendations. This report looks specifically into the working of the Germany-Turkey corridor. Findings suggest that the BSSA between Germany and Turkey is broadly working well, with no main substantive issues in the area of pension portability and few minor substantive issues concerning health care portability and financing. Some process issues around information and automation of information exchange are recognized and are beginning to be addressed. -
Publication
Assessing Benefit Portability for International Migrant Workers: A Review of the France-Morocco Bilateral Social Security Agreement
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-05)The portability of social benefits is gaining importance given the increasing share of individuals working at least part of their life outside their home country. Bilateral social security agreements (BSSAs) are considered a crucial approach to establishing portability, but the functionality and effectiveness of these agreements have not yet been investigated; thus, importance guidance for policy makers in migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries is missing. To shed light on how BSSAs work in practice, this document is part of a series providing information and lessons from studies of portability in four diverse but comparable migration corridors: Austria-Turkey, Germany-Turkey, Belgium-Morocco, and France-Morocco. A summary policy paper draws broader conclusions and offers overarching policy recommendations. This report looks specifically into the working of the France-Morocco corridor. Findings suggest that the BSSA between France and Morocco is broadly working well, with only a few substantive issues in the area of pensions and the task of implementing access to health care for retired migrants under the new BSSA effective as of 2011. The pension issues cluster around access to survivor’s pensions in view of civil law differences of addressing divorces and repudiation and the non-exportability of minimum pension guarantees in line with European Union legislation and lacking reciprocity. Process issues around information provision in Morocco and automation of information exchange to speed up benefit processing are recognized. -
Publication
Aging Population, Pension Funds, and Financial Markets : Regional Perspectives and Global Challenges for Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe
(World Bank, 2009)Population aging is a worldwide phenomenon, but it is particularly advanced in highly developed northern countries. The retirement of the baby-boom generation in these rich countries will impose additional, albeit temporary, pressure on their pension systems. To cope with this pressure, reforms have been introduced that have lessened the generosity of publicly provided pension benefits. By design and by implication, this change increases the importance of mandatory and voluntary funded retirement schemes in smoothing consumption across the life cycle. The first three chapters of this book investigate questions germane to pension systems in the Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe (CESE) economies: the extent to which pension systems were prepared to deal with multi pillar pension reform, how to foster the development of financial systems so that they can better support funded systems, and how ready the systems are for the approaching payout of benefits as the first participants in the funded pillar approach retirement age. The remaining three chapters investigate broader questions facing pension systems in both developed and emerging countries: the capacity of the financial markets to deliver sufficiently high net rates of return, the benefits and disadvantages of investment in emerging markets, and the effect of aging on the rates of return afforded by funded and unfunded schemes. -
Publication
Adequacy of Retirement Income after Pension Reforms in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe : Eight Country Studies
(World Bank, 2009)All of the former transition economies in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe (CESE) inherited from the era of central planning traditional defined-benefit pension systems financed on a pay-as-you-go basis. Like many pay-as-you-go public pension systems elsewhere in the world, CESE pension systems were in need of reforms to address short-term fiscal imbalances and longer-term issues relating to population aging. Reforms were also needed to adjust benefit and contribution structures to meet the challenges of-as well as to take advantage of opportunities relating to the transition to a market economy, including the widespread adoption of multiplier designs with improved risk-sharing across funded and unfunded pillars. By 2006, most countries in Europe and Central Asia had introduced a voluntary private pension scheme. By 2008, 14 countries roughly half of all countries in the region had legislated mandatory private pension schemes, and all but one of those schemes (the one in Ukraine) had been introduced. These reforms shared a number of common objectives, in particular putting the systems on a sounder financial footing and better aligning them with the (very different) incentives of a market economy. This report is organized as follows. The first section discusses the motivation for reform across the eight countries included in the study against the backdrop of the regional (and global) trend toward multiplier pension arrangements. The second section summarizes the key provisions of the reformed systems in the eight countries within the World Bank's five-pillar framework for pension system design. The third section summarizes pension system performance against the two crucially important dimensions of adequacy and sustainability. The last section provides some policy recommendations for addressing gaps in reforms and taking advantage of further opportunities. -
Publication
Pension Reform in Southeastern Europe : Linking to Labor and Financial Market Reforms
(World Bank, 2009)The reform of public pension systems and, more generally, the review of old-age income support are on the reform agenda worldwide. The reform discussion is more intense in countries where population aging is well advanced, including the member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), much of Latin America, China, Russia, and the former transition economies of Southeastern Europe (SEE). But developing countries in the global South are also awakening to the challenges of aging and old-age income support in view of changing family structures, urbanization, and migration. Over 80 percent of the increase in the numbers of persons age 65 and older up to 2050 will take place in countries with current per capita incomes of US$1,000 and below. Whereas the North grew rich before becoming old, the South risks becoming old before becoming rich. The remainder of the chapter attempts to substantiate this point. The next section briefly describes aging and its fiscal implications in the light of demographic developments in the countries of Southeastern Europe. There follows an outline of the drivers of pension reform that go beyond population aging and have to be understood when choosing among reform options. Subsequent sections take up recent international reform trends and lessons and underline key points concerning the labor market and financial market reforms needed to support pension reform. The chapter ends with some concluding remarks.