SSRN-The Actuarial Balance of the Pay-as-You-Go Pension System: 'American' Model versus 'Swedish' Model by Carlos Vidal-Meliá, María Del Carmen Boado-Penas

In whatever language you say it, transparency is good. Here it is on transparency in pension accounting.

SSRN-The Actuarial Balance of the Pay-as-You-Go Pension System: 'American' Model versus 'Swedish' Model by Carlos Vidal-Meliá, María Del Carmen Boado-Penas:

"The main conclusion reached is that making it mandatory for the actuarial balance to be drawn up every year would force politicians to be a lot more careful about what they say and encourage them to avoid the use of populism in pensions. Contributors and pensioners, on the other hand, would have a reliable way of measuring to what degree the promises made to them regarding payment of their pensions are actually kept."

Of course incentives matter in all things and politicians do not want transparency since they cannot make as many promises in its presence, so reform has been slow in coming.

Note: This paper is in Spanish--if you are like me and need help with translation, I used Google's translation. It was far from perfect (Not only did some sentences not make sense, but also you have to copy and paste about a million times), but worked.

Note to self: relearn Spanish!
Here is a link to it.