Research On Public Governance Of Personal Account Pensions: Act In The Best Interests Of Beneficiaries

Facing the common challenge of heavy financial pressure and shortage of pensionfund under ageing of population and economic globalization，almost all developedcountries have been structuring and practicing mulit-pillar or mulit-layer pensionsystem since1980s. Personal account pensions have been becoming one of the mainsources to supply retirement income of retirees. People make use of various personalaccount pension schemes to smooth consumption in order to fulfill graceful retirementlife.The long-term practices of different countries have shown that free market stylepension industry generates serious market failures and good public governance isessential to sustainable development of personal account pensions. The core ideology is“acting in the best interest of beneficiaries”，which initiates all related institutions andarrangements.The comprehensive and thorough research on public governance of personalaccount pensions to reach theoretical consensus and push forward institutions building，is not only important to integrated management of existing various personal accounts ofpension schemes in our country，but also very important to constructing and improvingChina’s mulit-pillar pension system.The dissertation summarizes related literatures and implements positive analysis onempty personal account of China’s present urban labor’s basic pension insurance，thendefinitudes connotation of “acting in the best interest of beneficiaries”and deduces afinancial analysis model beginning with consumption smoothing theory. Based onquantitative and qualitative analysis on all variables of the financial analysis model andrelated risk factors of personal account pensions，the dissertation constructs a theoreticalmodel including eights elements， including property rights protection, policyencouragement，contributions guarantee, service innovation，trustee accountability，effective investment，information disclosure, regulation and supervision.The dissertation analyses two typical international cases， the AustraliaSuperannuation and UK’s employment pension, and focuses on institutions reformationand pension industry development of personal account pensions in these two countries.After validating and supplementing the above deductions by the two cases，the dissertation improves the theoretical model and concludes eight essential points ofpublic governance of personal account pensions.Then the dissertation applies theoretical model to Shanghai，which has the heaviestpressure of aging population structure，the most mature civic investment culture，andleading position of development of various personal accounts of pension schemesincluding enterprise pension in China. After analyzing the institutions deficiencies ofpresent pension system in Shanghai， the dissertation put forwards reformationsuggestion which aims to build up citizen pension personal accounts and a centralmanagement platform，based on the experiences of development and management ofenterprise pension in Shanghai.The dissertation concludes that governments have exclusive responsibilities inpublic governance of personal account pensions including property rights protection，policy design，deferred tax policy，regulation and supervision. The dissertation also putsforward several policy suggestions on progressing personal account pensions in China.