Books by Franco (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Modigliani

At the January 1977 meeting of its monthly Economic Seminar series, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco was honored to present Prof. Franco Modigliani, Immediate Past President of the American Economic Association. In his paper, Prof. Modigliani developed some of the themes which he had first covered last September in his AEA Presidential Address, ¿gThe Monetarist Controversy"YOr, Should We Forsake Stabilization Policies?¿h The Bank was doubly fortunate to obtain, as seminar discussant, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, who was serving as Visiting Scholar at this institution during the winter term. This supplement to the Bank¿fs Economic Review contains Prof. Modigliani¿fs lecture, Prof. Friedman¿fs reply, the discussion between the two and a floor discussion"Yplus, as an appendix, Prof. Modigliani¿fs AEA Presidential Address. The seminar was chaired by Dr. Michael W. Keran, Vice President and Director of Research for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

This book presents an academic and a practical aspect on managing pension funds to clarify the global debate on social security. The authors establish the basic choices in designating any system to help policy makers develop the system that achieves their many objectives. They examine reforms in Latin America to highlight flaws and to estimate the true cost of these reforms and factors affecting these costs. The authors then discuss how the United States and Spain can implement robust systems incorporating many of the ideal features. The success of reforms depends on financial innovation to mitigate key risks and some innovations are discussed, which also demonstrates how pension reform choices affect the achievement of retirement objectives. Finally, the authors examine some proposed hybrid options to show how the beneficial features of these hybrids can be captured through good design in a single fund.