Evaluating the Impact on Saving of Tax-Favored Retirement Plans

This paper exploits a recent reform of private pension schemes in Italy to identify the impact on household saving of tax-favored retirement saving plans. The reform was part of the restructuring of the social security system and was aimed at rising private long-term saving by making pension funds more attractive and convenient. We control for unobserved saver heterogeneity and a central focus is on substitution across saving instruments. We find that the pension fund legislation had a strong effect on the allocation of saving and triggered substantial substitution of non-tax-favored non-retirement wealth for tax-favored pension funds. In contrast, we find that it had little, if any effect on household saving flows. Our findings also suggest that the provision of 'closed' pension funds might significantly affect the decision to invest in private retirement schemes. © 2013 Cambridge University Press