Letture per il fine settimana 9-1-2016

Solo per segnalare che è intervenuto nei commenti all' articolo di Repec per dire la sua sulle critiche ricevute.

A me l'argomento di Fubini è sembrato assurdo prima ancora di entrare nel merito dei numeri. Lui, come da perfetta tradizione italiana, assume che gli economisti siano politici e in quanto tali creino a piacimento leggi in base alle proprie teorie. Quindi se c'è una crisi, si capisce, è colpa degli accademici che devono cambiare posizione.

L'idea che questi possano dire A e i politici fare B non lo sfiora (e d'altra parte non c'è da sorprendersi se il campione sono gli economisti che contribuiscono alla politica economica italiana: qui sì che c'è corrispondenza 1:1, ma nella direzione opposta).

Ma quanti sono davvero gli accademici in politica? A me non è che ne vengano in mente tantissimi. Ah no, aspettate: c'era quel signore in moto, molto pittoresco, che si vedeva parecchio mesi fa. Lui sì che è arrivato a un passo dall'applicare le sue teorie al mondo reale. Magari Fubini ha presente, d'altronde scrivono sullo stesso sito.

 

A notable and important exception is Italy: compared to its 2007/2060 benefit ratio, its ratio for 2013/2060 marked the greatest shift among EU countries towards a more just intergenerational position. Italy achieved sustainability in its pension system not by cutting the future benefit ratio, but by reducing the current benefit ratio, thus improving intergenerational burden-sharing (see the Annex for more details).

 This analysis suggests that overall entitlements have been curtailed in many countries to address sustainability questions, but the burden seems not to have been shared equally, favouring current over future pensioners, especially in crisis-hit southern Europe (Italy being an exception).

 

Leggendo, uno si chiede giustamente: merito anche della Sig.ra Fornero?
Poi uno si va a leggere l'Annex, e legge:

 

ANNEX I: An overview of Italy’s 2011 pension reform

By Elsa Fornero

In November 2011, Italian public finances were near collapse and the country’s political system was in a stalemate. Financial operators were turning their backs on Italian sovereign debt auctions and the few who took part were demanding exaggerated interest rates, so that the interest paid by Italy on its new 10-year bonds exceeded the interest paid by Germany on similar bonds by a spread of 500 basis points (more than three times the spread in July 2015). Italy had (and still has) to refinance on average over €1 billion per day of its huge public debt and its well-tested system for doing so was under massive attack. The possibility that interest might not be paid and that expiring bonds might not be reimbursedwas very real; pensions and civil service salarieswere at risk,while central and local administrations were already unable to pay suppliers.

The financial crisis came on top of a slow industrial decline that had been afflicting Italy for about 20 years. Italy had cut its research and development expenditures, got out of high-productivity sectors such as electronics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals and concentrated on labour-intensive fashionoriented ‘made in Italy’ products, encountering increasingly stiff competition fromdeveloping countries.

When the technocratic government of Mario Monti took office (16 November 2011), pension reform was a key priority.The reform had to be far-reaching enough to convince European partners and financial markets that Italy deserved to be trusted as a debtor, but sensible enough to obtain the (albeit reluctant) approval of the parliament and the public. It had to realise immediate savings in pension expenditure and future savings in the coming decades, thus reducing the burden on the young and on subsequent generations. It had to eliminate or drastically reduce the distortions still embedded in the system after 20 years of reasonable but too-gradual reforms.

The reform(law214/2011) speeded up the transition to the notional defined contribution (NDC) system by extending the DC method of benefit calculation to allworkers (including members of Parliament) as of 1 January 2012.This was very important to restore credibility to the formula, still largely unfamiliar to the people and considered ‘too severe’ by politicians.The reform also significantly raised statutory retirement ages and largely eliminated so-called seniority pensions,whichwere based on the number of years worked, mostly irrespective of age; it aligned, as of 2018, the retirement ages of women to those of men; and it indexed all retirement requisites to changes in life expectancy.To make things fair once again with respect to past ‘generous’ defined benefit pensions, the reform established a ‘solidarity contribution’ for people receiving very large pensions. It also froze for two years the indexing of pensions to prices, excluding only pensions under €1,400 per month.These last two measures were later nullified by the Constitutional Court, but substantially re-established by the subsequent governments. As a result, according to international evaluations, the Italian pension system is now financially sustainable.Most families had to revise lifetime financial expectations downward to take into account the new situation. Because of the financial emergency, there was little time for social dialogue, parliamentary debate (the reform was presented to parliament as a government decree and approved in just a fewweeks through a vote of confidence) or the transition period that is customary in pension reforms. The absence of a transition period caused problems forworkerswhowere already displaced from their job, were in a mobility scheme, were expecting to retire within a few years or who had, at some point in their working life, voluntarily left their job, trusting that pension laws would remain unchanged. The reform established a safeguard clause for 65,000 workers, according to an estimate by the Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale, the national pension office. It turned out later that the numberwas much too small, since many individual and some collective agreements betweenworkers and employers had been concludedwithout any formal registration.The press and public opinion lumped all cases together, calling this group ‘Esodati’, referring to a forced exodus from the labour market, and considered all of them as equally deserving of being safeguarded, irrespective of their different situations and, in particular, because many of them had voluntarily left their job, often in exchange for a lump sum to be added to their severance pay. In subsequent provisions, the government added another 65,000 workers to the safeguard clause, for a total of 130,000 safeguarded workers.The subsequent government further increased the number to almost 160,000. Despite widespread protests, the trade unions did not call for a general strike.The reform reduced the implicit pension debt and also challenged the ‘lump of labour fallacy’, a basic premise of past pension legislation and a frequent assertion in public debate that such a reformwould reduce the number of jobs available to the young by keeping older workers at work longer. Obviously, the extension of working life requires additional measures to stimulate the demand for olderworkers, something that is more difficult in a period of recession. The approval of the ‘Rescue Italy’ decree, ofwhich the pension reform was a fundamental part, resulted in a marked reduction in the interest rate spread and was a fundamental factor behind the European Commission terminating inMay 2012 the infringement procedure that had been started in 2009 against Italy for running an excessive deficit 

 

"A notable and important exception is Italy: compared to its 2007/2060 benefit ratio, its ratio for 2013/2060 marked the greatest shift among EU countries towards a more just intergenerational position. Italy achieved sustainability in its pension system not by cutting the future benefit ratio, but by reducing the current benefit ratio, thus improving intergenerational burden-sharing"

Whaddaya kidding me?