Introducing an Austrian backpack in Spain

Abstract

In an overlapping generations economy with incomplete insurance markets, the introduction of an employment fund (akin to the one introduced in Austria in 2003, also known as `Austrian backpack') can enhance production effciency and social welfare, if it complements, and in part substitutes, the two classical systems of public insurance: pay-as-you-go pensions and unemployment insurance (UI). We show this in a calibrated dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents of the Spanish economy (2014). A `backpack' (BP) employment fund is an individual (across jobs) transferable fund, which earns the economy interest rate as a return and is financed with a small payroll tax (a BP tax). The worker can use the fund if he or she becomes unemployed or retires. To complement the existing Spanish pension and UI systems with a 2% BP tax would be preferred to the status quo by more than 90% of the households of the calibrated economy, a percentage that can be higher with a more substantial BP (i.e. higher BP tax). Our model also provides a framework where other reforms (e.g. a partial, or complete, substitution of current unsustainable pension systems) can be quantitatively assessed.