Journal of Knowledge Management, Economics and Information Technology

Towards the late 90’s, together with overcoming the shock of transition, most countries in Central and Eastern Europe began a process of profound reform of the pension systems. The aim of these reforms was mainly ensuring the financial sustainability of the pension systems often without taking into account their primary goal: to provide adequate retirement incomes, to allow the elderly to maintain a decent living standard after retirement and to have economic independence. However, a successful pension system is not the one that involves little spending but the one achieving its primary goal while limiting the future pressures on public finances.

The economic crisis has increased the vulnerability of the pension systems. The economic recessions or slow economic growth, budget deficits and debt burdens, low employment rates have led to rising the concern about the ability of pension systems to fulfil their purpose. In this context, most Central and Eastern European countries have recently been forced to take up new changes in pensions. In our study we accomplished a comparative analysis of the pension systems’ performance based on calculating a composite indicator that includes three components: the indicator of adequacy, the financial sustainability indicator and the indicator of modernity. Each of these components is obtained by aggregating a selection of sub-indicators. The purpose of this analysis is to identify best practices for successful reform, but also to highlight potential hazards or imbalances that might face various emerging countries.

  A Comparative Review Over the Pension Systems’ Performance in Central and Eastern European Countries (303.6 KiB, 2,964 hits)

For the twenty-first century life, there cannot be a real, long-term and sustained progress, without insurance. Let’s only consider the avalanche of natural disasters and acts of terrorism in recent years that have affected many parts of the world, brought suffering to millions of people and caused huge economic losses.

The common knowledge that a country’s economic strength lays in banking and insurance needs no arguments. It is not accidental that the most stable economies, where even population’s prosperity is remarkable, are found in countries where insurance is well represented in economic life.

In a modern economy, insurances play an important role due to its contribution to financial stability, by promoting effective control of various risk categories and mobilizing people’s savings.

This paper plans to identify the main characteristics, trends and developments of life insurance products and their market, as well as the interactions between the insurance sector, banks and financial markets and to highlight some of the determinants of insurance demand. Also, another topic addressed is the current economic context, and the effects of inflation and economic recession on this sector.

Finally, this paper contains a short observation of the evolution of this particular market, striving to make a “prediction” of the immediate prospects of this activity.

  Life Insurance - Their Characteristics Importance and Actuality On The Romanian Market (221.9 KiB, 2,826 hits)