Social Security Reform: Financial and Political Issues in International Perspective »

Robin Brooks is an economist in the Financial Studies Division of the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. His research focuses on the growing importance of financial linkages across countries and their implications for risk reduction strategies in portfolio management. Before joining the IMF, Dr Brooks was a Research Fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, where he studied the effects of population aging on financial markets.

Assaf Razin is the Mario-Henrique Simonsen Professor of Public Economics at Tel Aviv University and the Friedman Professor of International Economics at Cornell University. He is particularly known for his work on human capital growth, the economics of the family, public economics and international economics. Professor Razin has co-authored numerous books, including Fiscal Policies and Growth in the World Economy, Labor, Capital, and Finance: International Flows (Cambridge University Press, 2001), and the forthcoming The Decline of the Welfare State: Political Economics of Aging, Migration and Globalization.

This book focuses on the underlying economic issues of the debate over public pension system reform.