Pension Funds and the Macroeconomy
The Pension Research Centre (PeRCent) is proud to announce the event:
Pension Funds and the Macroeconomy
The event will take place on November 19 from 12.30-17.15 in room SP202 at Copenhagen Business School.
Denmark has experienced a period of 30 years with permanent current-account surpluses, and a net foreign liabilities position of around 40 per cent of GDP has been turned into net assets of more than 60 per cent of GDP over that same period. This has happened against the backdrop of a tax reform that substantially reduced the incentive for credit-financed consumption and the gradual introduction of a funded pension system – occupational pension schemes and private pensions subject to a favorable tax treatment.
Pension funds now constitute more than twice GDP. This pension system implies that retirement incomes for many Danes are at a high level and reduces the need to bring down debt obligations before withdrawing from the labor market. Hence, Danish households’ gross debt has over the same period increased substantially and now stands at 2½-3 times households’ disposable income – the highest level in any Western country.
At this half-day conference, we will look closer at what the large pension sector means for the Danish economy at large and address some of the challenges related to being a creditor nation more broadly speaking.
The first part of the conference will focus on how interest rate and exchange rate risks related to the large pension savings are hedged, on ESG issues, and on pensions funds’ investment policies in a low interest-rate environment more broadly. This will be followed by presentations from leading international scholars that look at how challenges and possibilities of having a large, funded pension system and large net foreign assets are handled in countries that are comparable to Denmark. Finally, the conference will end with a panel discussion between senior policy makers in the Danish economy and leading international experts on the economic importance of the large pension savings and pension funds.
Find the programme and register for the conference here.
Registration deadline: November 11, 2019