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This study aims to examine the solvency and performance persistence of defined benefit private and public pension plans (DBPPs) in the Republic of Congo.

The authors use the 2 × 2 contingency table approach and the time product ratio (TPR)-based cross-product ratio (CPR) on data covering ten years from 2011 to 2020, with variable funded ratios and excess returns, to determine the solvency and performance persistence of defined benefit pension plans.

The authors document a lack of solvency and performance persistence in DBPP funds. They conclude that the solvency and performance of DBPP funds are not repetitive. The previous year's private and public defined benefit pension funds’ results do not repeat in the current year. Hence, the current solvency and performance of defined benefit pension funds are not good predictors of future funds' solvency and performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to combine solvency and performance to examine the persistence of defined benefit pension plans in sub-Saharan Africa.

China's New Rural Pension Program (NRPP) has been implemented for a decade, but the factors that facilitate rural residents' participation have received little attention. This study aims to investigate whether financial literacy has an influence on rural residents' behavior of participation in the NRPP. In particular, this study further verifies if high financial literacy is important and whether financial education can enhance the impact of financial literacy on current, long-term and dynamic pension decisions of rural households.

This study investigates the impact of financial literacy on rural residents' participation in China's NRPP using the China Household Financial Survey (CHFS) Data of 2015 and 2017. This study constructs an analytical framework for current, long-term and dynamic impacts and comprehensively analyzes the value of financial literacy in the decision making of the NRPP. This study uses the instrumental variable method to solve the possible endogeneity problem. In addition, the authors also demonstrate the positive role of high financial literacy in household pension decisions. Further analysis reveals gender and regional heterogeneity in the impact of financial literacy on pension decisions. The moderating effect model explores whether financial education has a significant moderating effect on financial literacy and pension decision making of the NRPP.

Financial literacy can improve the participation behavior of households in rural areas (dynamic effect) and promote their current and long-term participation in the NRPP, choosing a higher pension contribution level in the NRPP. However, financial literacy has no significant effect on the change in the contribution amount of the NRPP. Further research finds that high financial literacy has comparative advantages in household pension decision making in rural areas. There are gender and regional differences in the impact of financial literacy on pension decisions. In addition, effective financial literacy education enhances the current, long-term and dynamic impacts of residents' financial literacy on NRPP participation and pension contributions.

This study comprehensively considers the impact of financial literacy on pension decision making behavior from three aspects: current, long-term and dynamic, making up for the dearth in the existing literature that only focuses on the impact of financial literacy on current financial behaviors and bridging the gap between the theoretical framework and experimental results. Our study proposes new policy implications: (1) Governments and financial institutions should pay attention to financial literacy and education levels in rural areas and carry out financial education and training programs to increase social welfare levels by increasing rural residents' participation and pension contribution. (2) The community can strengthen the policy advocacy of the NRPP and make people develop a stronger sense of trust toward it. The government can also subsidize individual accounts through financial support.

This study comprehensively considers the impact of financial literacy on pension decision-making behavior from three aspects: current, long-term and dynamic, making up for the dearth in the existing literature that only focuses on the impact of financial literacy on current financial behaviors and bridging the gap between the theoretical framework and experimental results. Our study proposes new policy implications: (1) Governments and financial institutions should pay attention to financial literacy and education levels in rural areas and carry out financial education and training programs to increase social welfare levels by increasing rural residents' participation and pension contribution. (2) The community can strengthen the policy advocacy of the NRPP and make people develop a stronger sense of trust toward it. The government can also subsidize individual accounts through financial support.

This study aims to present a bibliometric analysis of research on pensions and retirement systems over the past 100 years. The study examines the intellectual structure and mapping in the field of pension and retirement; uncovers growth and publication patterns; identifies thematic areas in the pension domain; provides analysis of gaps; and recommends direction for future research.

The study sourced data from the Scopus database between 1910 and 2022 covering a 112-year period. Employing bibliometric techniques, a total of 6,661 papers were selected and analyzed using SPSS and VOSviewer software.

Results from the cluster analysis suggest research in this domain has focused on five thematic areas namely pension plans, retirement systems, pension schemes, demographic, and socio-economic determinants of pension and retirement decisions. The authors show from the overlay visualization output how these themes have evolved within the period under review. The study further presents major developments, conclusions and suggestions for future research directions based on insights obtained from the research themes to enrich the field of pension and retirement planning.

The study is useful for informing researchers and practitioners on the state of the pension domain, and findings are useful avenues in developing the research field.

The study adds to existing literature on pension and retirement by offering an analysis of the state of pension research over a century and highlighting areas for future research.

This article aims to link discussions of the role of earnings-related pension measures with time in Hong Kong (HK) and the United Kingdom (UK). It presents a new conceptual “time-based framework” to explore two related types of government response to the way people accumulate pension incomes through participation in paid work. The first is to consider governments' perceptions of appropriate time in work and retirement. The second is to consider how governments use pension measures to influence the connection between the amount of time people spend in paid work and retirement.

This is a conceptual paper. The time-based framework is developed using literature concerning discretionary time and the social construction of time. To explore the empirical significance of this framework, the authors discuss how it can be applied to the analysis of earnings-related pension measures in HK and the UK.

The evidence generated from the discussion of the earnings-related pension measures in HK and the UK shows that pension policies can serve both as a financial and time instrument. At the same time as influencing the connection between the amount of time people spend in paid work and the pensions they can accumulate, pension policies can be used to convey the government's views on important time issues, namely the appropriate length of time in work and retirement, and the relative value of the time spent in paid work and providing informal care.

A new framework is developed to explore the connection between the studies of earnings-related pension measures and time, which is an understudied area.

This paper offers a new perspective on the potential motivation for the adoption of employee ownership based on market power. Employee ownership may be linked to market power, either through contributing to firm growth that leads to market power or through industry leaders adopting employee ownership as part of rent sharing or a broader consolidation of market position. Both employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) coverage and product market concentration (PMC) have been increasing in the past two decades, providing a good opportunity to see if and how these are related.

The authors predict ESOP adoption and termination using multilevel regressions based on 2002–2012 firm- and industry-level data from the Census Bureau, Compustat and Form 5500 pension datasets.

The authors find that the top four firms in concentrated industries are more likely to adopt Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), while having an ESOP does not predict entering the top four, apart from firm-level predictors. Tests indicate the first result does not reflect simple rent sharing with employees but instead appears to reflect an effort by firms to consolidate market power through the attraction and retention (or “locking in”) of industry talent. Other positive predictors of ESOPs include company size, being in a high-wage industry and having a defined benefit (DB) pension.

To better distinguish among hypotheses, it would be helpful to have firm-level data on managerial attitudes, strategies, networks and monopsony measures. Therefore, future research using such data would be highly useful and encouraged.

The paper includes implications for the potential usefulness of ESOPs in attracting and retaining talent and for the design of nuanced policy to encourage more broadly based sharing of economic rewards.

While prior research focuses on firm-level predictors of employee ownership, this study uses market concentration and other industry-level variables to predict the use of ESOPs. This study makes a unique contribution, broadening the current thinking on firm motives and environmental conditions predictive of firm ESOP adoption.

The purpose of this study is to identify the drivers and future scenarios of Iran’s Social Security Organization.

The research is applied in terms of orientation and mixed in terms of methodology. In this research, the methods of theme analysis, root definitions, fuzzy Delphi and Cocoso were used. The theoretical population is the managers and senior experts of the social security organization, and the sampling method was done in a judgmental way. The tools of data collection were interviews and questionnaires. The interview tool was used to extract the main and subdrivers of the research and develop the scenarios.

Through theme analysis, 35 subdrivers were extracted in the form of economic, sociocultural, financial and investment, policy, marketing, environmental and legal themes. Due to the large number of subdrivers, these factors were screened with fuzzy Delphi. Eleven drivers had defuzzied coefficient higher than 0.7 and were selected for final prioritization. The final drivers were prioritized with the CoCoSo technique, and the two drivers of social security holdings governance and state of government revenues had the highest priority. Based on these two drivers, four scenarios of prosperity, resilient social security, unstable development and collapse have been developed.

Some of the suggestions of the research are: using the capacity of FinTechs and financial startups to invest the government revenues of the organization, using digital technologies such as business intelligence for more efficient decisions and developing corporate governance in the organization.

How did investors in the Swedish Premium Pension System (PPS) react to the stock market shock ignited by the COVID-19 pandemic?

The authors use fund-level data from the Swedish Pensions Agency on investment choices in the PPS. For each fund, the authors use monthly information on the number of investors and holdings' market value up to November 2020. The authors also use information on the total number of portfolio changes per day. For analyzing whether PPS investors reacted to the pandemic with claiming their pension, the authors use monthly data on the number of investors of a certain age group who initiate their public pension payment.

Trades more than doubled, and shifted capital from equity funds to low risk interest funds. In economic terms, however, trading stayed at low levels–less than two percent of investors traded in March 2020 and there was no effect on pension withdrawals. The increased trading during the market tumult was disproportionately concentrated among investors in the top of the pension capital distribution.

With fund-level data, the authors cannot investigate what in particular made retirement investors stay calm in the midst of a severe market decline. Either, those investors have a long-term investment horizon as they save for their pension or particular features of the system's choice architecture induce inertia and discourage from trading. The sub-group analyses are more consistent with the explanation that PPS-induced inertia is responsible for the relatively small increase in trading activity, but future research could exploit individual level data to explore this in more detail.

The often-criticized PPS choice architecture provided positive side effects in times of a severe market shock by shielding retail investors from committing trading mistakes when trying to outsmart the market.

The study complements previous evidence on the effects of COVID-19 on investor activity. The small response of PPS investors to COVID-19 is in line with earlier US findings on 401(k) accounts during the 2007 financial crisis (Tang et al., 2012) and industry reports about the COVID-19 period (see, e.g. Mitchell, 2020). The authors find no effects at all on public pension withdrawals in Sweden, while evidence from US 401(k) plans indicates a small share of workers taking COVID-related early withdrawals.

High-quality labor supply is inevitable to maintain sustainable and steady economic growth. This study mainly explores the impact of the social pension system on the health of human capital, and further explores its impact mechanism.

On the basis of the data from China Family Panel Studies from 2012 to 2018, this article uses the fixed effect model and the mediation effect model to empirically study the influence of the social pension scheme on the health of human capital and further explore its influence mechanism.

This study shows that the social pension scheme can significantly improve the physical and mental health of laborers, especially for low-income and agricultural groups. The implementation of the social pension scheme contributes to increasing medical services and reducing the labor supply for the benefit of human health capital. Therefore, the government should continue to expand the coverage of the social pension scheme and comprehensively improve the importance of human health capital on economic growth.

Medical costs and labor supply play a mediating effect in the relationship between social pension and rural labors' health status, which indicates that medical costs and labor supply level are still important factors affecting the health status of rural labor. There are essential factors affecting the health status of the rural labor force, and their role should be given more consideration in the process of system design and improvement.

The existing studies have more frequently studied the effect of the implementation of social pension schemes from the perspective of economic performance, but this paper evaluates the policy effect of social pension schemes based on the perspective of health human capital, which enriches research on health performance in related fields.

The purpose of this study is to find out the effect of consumption tax on savings behavior especially on the people who are close to their retirement.

The authors analyze the response in spending and retirement saving using a difference-in-differences regression methodology. The authors use the year since the Public Provident Fund (PPF) enrollment date for each individual as a random assignment to identify the service tax policy's causal impact. Therefore, this variable is a continuous variable defined as an individual's age until the end of the restrictions when people can withdraw money from their retirement savings account PPF without any penalty. The treatment variable is the service tax shock (increase in service tax) that happened effective 1st April 2015.

The authors find a significant effect of a change in the service tax rate on individuals' spending and PPF saving behavior. On average, individuals lower their consumption by about 14% and increase their PPF savings by 16% in response to the increase in the service tax rate. The authors find substantial heterogeneity in effect across different types of individuals. The effect is more pronounced for people closer to their retirement and needy people (defined as individuals with low traditional savings account balances).

The authors studied the effect of consumption tax on one category of savings (PPF) only. There are other savings instruments available in India. The data for those were not available to us.

This paper not only throws light on the consumption and savings behaviour of the individuals, but will also help the policy maker for framing appropriate fiscal policy.

Using a unique and proprietary data from a large bank in India, the authors analyze the effect of a tax policy change on households' consumption and retirement savings behavior. The authors find that households reduce their consumption by 14% and increase their voluntary retirement savings (Public Provident Fund aka PPF) by 16% in response to an increase in the service tax policy. Individuals close to their retirement age (55 years of age and above) and without any withdrawal restrictions from their PPF account tend to reduce their expenditures more and save more. Individuals with financial constraints and withdrawal restrictions do not reduce their expenditures significantly. To the best of the authors’ knowledge no study was done on this.

There has been a great deal of exploratory, conceptual and empirical research on digital financial literacy (DFL) in the fields of finance, economics, business and management. But up until now, there has not been any attempt to provide a thorough scientific mapping of the area. Therefore, by combining various knowledge systems, this study seeks to identify the current research trend.

A sample of 158 papers was subjected to bibliometric analysis in the areas of DFL or digital finance. Assembling, organising and evaluating are the three phases that make up the bibliometric analysis process derived from the most dependable and genuine sources, the Scopus database, and the Web of Science (WoS) database. This study was done using a scientific search technique on the Scopus and WoS databases for the years 2015 through 2022. The study made use of Biblioshiny, a web-based tool created in R-studio and part of the Bibliometrix package. Prominent journals, authors, nations, articles and themes were identified with the use of the software's automated workflow. “Citation, co-citation, and social network analysis” were also carried out.

The study' outcomes indicate that, as an interdisciplinary discipline, the themes of digital finance have changed throughout time. Researchers first concentrated on socioeconomic and demographic variables, but over time the subject expanded to include themes like influencing, promoting, and behavioural factors that affect digital financial literacy (DFL). This research shows the conceptual framework of the area in addition to its intellectual and social structure. This study offers crucial insights into subjects that demand more research.

Since the current study is a bibliometric analysis, the usual restrictions on such studies apply. A meta-analysis, a thorough literature review and other methods would be beneficial for future researchers to develop a solid conceptual framework. This current research work's science mapping is restricted to the Scopus and WoS databases because this research includes more high-quality articles and has organised formats that work with the Bibliometrix application.

Present research provides critical insights into saving behaviour, retirement planning, digital finance and the interdependence of these. This research highlights the most prevalent problems in the field and points in the direction of potential areas for further study. Exposing the social and intellectual structure of the domain educates upcoming scholars about the themes, contexts and opportunities for collaboration in this field.

The study will be useful for future learning as the study gives broad exposure to the current literature in the field of digital finance. On the other hand, people will also grow aware of the effects of digital finance and make the proper choices as a result. Additionally, the report might offer crucial insights for developing policies on digital finance and literacy.

In the past, a significant number of conceptual and empirical studies were conducted internationally in the research fields of economics, finance, business, management and consumer behaviour. This research makes a significant addition by bringing together disparate literature in the field, highlighting reliable sources, authors and documents, and examining the relationship between digital finance, saving behaviour and retirement planning.