Anita Poulou

About me: My name is Anita Poulou. I am a doctoral researcher in Tax Economics at Tilburg University, affiliated with CentER Graduate School, the Fiscal Institute Tilburg, and Netspar, and supervised by Prof. Dr. Ed Westerhout and Prof. Dr. Arjan Lejour. My research sits at the intersection of public finance and household finance, with a focus on pension systems, retirement behaviour, and welfare under financial constraints. I combine theoretical modelling and empirical analysis to address policy-relevant questions in the design of occupational pensions.

Research interests: Household Finance; Pension Systems; Life-Cycle Models; Quantitative Finance; Operations Research; Econometrics

Teaching: Business Taxation (Master); Tax Economics (Master of Research); Thesis Supervision (Master)

Affiliations: Tilburg University (TiSEM); Fiscal Institute Tilburg; Netspar; formerly: Allianz Research

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Implications of actuarial fairness in occupational pensions --- Working Paper

This paper examines how strengthening the link between pension contributions and benefits affects retirement timing, redistribution, pension-fund finances, and tax revenues. We study the abolition of uniformity pricing in a collective funded occupational pension system. Using a deterministic one-generation model with heterogeneous earnings growth and longevity, we compare uniformity pricing with two actuarially neutral and fair alternatives: rising contributions with stable accruals, and stable contributions with decreasing accruals. We show that replacing uniformity pricing with either alternative encourages earlier retirement, particularly among participants with steeper earnings profiles, while reducing transfers from flatter to steeper profiles. If pension funds fail to anticipate this behavioral response, the reform may generate a surplus or deficit. Earlier retirement also reduces tax revenues, highlighting a trade-off between actuarial fairness and late-career work incentives.

Implications of centrally managed pensions under DRRA --- Working Paper

Keywords: Backward induction, Non-homothetic preferences, Life-cycle optimization, Dynamic programming

Welfare assessment under a pension account with suboptimal investment policies and non-standard utility.

This job-market paper asks a simple question with wide policy relevance: if a defined-contribution plan imposes a one-size-fits-all investment rule on participants whose risk tolerance varies with wealth, how large are the welfare costs? I build a life-cycle framework with non-homothetic preferences in the spirit of Wachter & Yogo (2010)—i.e., DRRA that rises with consumption/wealth—and solve the household problem with a high-dimensional backward-induction algorithm over a four-dimensional state (financial wealth, human wealth, pension wealth, and the pension fund’s policy). The homothetic case nests with closed-form solutions; the DRRA case is handled numerically and explored under extensive calibrations and market scenarios. The benchmark finding is robust and perhaps counter-intuitive: an exogenously managed pension account generates negligible welfare losses relative to the unconstrained optimum across the wealth distribution and across financial scenarios. The mechanism is transparent. Early in the career, both financial and pension wealth optimally sit at the 100% risky boundary, so the imposed rule does not bite; mid-career, accumulated financial wealth is large enough to offset any suboptimal pension allocation; late in the career, human wealth is depleted and leverage demand vanishes, so constraints rarely bind. Where they do bind, adjustments in the freely chosen portfolio absorb them, leaving lifetime utility essentially unchanged.

Against this neutral baseline, I evaluate policies that either shrink the role of the pension account or enhance the value of participation. Size-reducing changes—such as capped contributions or lump-sum decumulation at retirement—are welfare-neutral precisely because the baseline already sits near first-best. By contrast, policies that expand insurance, liquidity, or risk-scaling capacity produce material gains. Intergenerational risk-sharing with leverage delivers the strongest improvements by smoothing shocks in downturns and scaling risk in upturns; leverage alone is pro-cyclical (losses in bad states, large gains in good ones). Tax deferral with a retirement tax break reliably raises welfare through liquidity and lower lifetime taxation, while pure deferral without a break yields modest but positive effects. Exempting pension returns from taxation is downside-sensitive: it erodes implicit insurance in poor markets and offers limited upside in booms. Together, these results indicate that when a centrally managed DC plan is already close to first-best, trimming its size does little, whereas designs that provide insurance or scalable risk-taking matter.

Pessimism and proactivity in pension preparation --- In Progress

Keywords: Households' beliefs, Savings behavior, Household finance, Retirement preparedness

Empirical study on financial planning choices of households depending on their level of trust in pension systems.

This chapter tests whether pessimism about France’s statutory (PAYG-DB) pensions translates into concrete preparation and, if so, through which saving channels. Guided by life-cycle models, it posits: (i) stronger pessimism about austerity (e.g., later retirement ages, higher contributions, lower replacement rates) should raise retirement preparation and voluntary savings formation; and (ii) when that pessimism extends to the broader fiscal environment, households shift from regulated, tax-deferred pension accounts to more flexible, less regulated vehicles that preserve liquidity. Without that broader extrapolation, pessimists favor regulated, tax-advantaged accounts. The hypotheses also distinguish attitudes from behavior and allow heterogeneity by age and preparedness.

Macroeconomic Research --- Co-authored work at Allianz SE and Allianz Trade

The flaw in the liquidity paradigm: Lessons from China, May 31, 2021, available here

Joe Biden's infrastructure plan: Defying gravity, Apr 6, 2021, available here

The not so merry adventures of the Robin Hood generation in financial markets, Mar 3, 2021, available here

President Biden's inauguration: 100 days to save America, Jan 20, 2021, available here

Brexiting in times of Covid-19, Jan 12, 2021, available here

Europe: One in four corporates will need more policy support in 2021 to avert a cash-flow crisis, Nov 24, 2020, available here

RCEP: Common rule of origin could boost regional trade by around USD90bn annually, Nov 17, 2020, available here

Joe Biden's victory: Reconciliation economics, Nov 9, 2020, available here

The U.S. elections turn into a judiciary battle: What’s next?, Nov 6, 2020, available here

A Hard Brexit could cost the EU EUR 33bn in annual exports, Oct 20, 2020, available here

U.S. elections — We have a winner: Debt, Sep 29, 2020, available here

Covid-19 to increase firms’ liquidity needs to a record USD8tn as payment delays and inventories surge, Jul 7, 2020, available here

Brexit: Trade tricks won't be enough, Jul 1, 2020, available here and published in Current Economics

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