"This paper analyses business preferences towards the development of private pension funds. Existing studies about business involvement in welfare state reform equate capital with employers and focus on the socio-economic determinants of their preferences. In contrast, this paper also analyses the role of financial firms. Moreover, it develops a set of hypotheses about how institutions contribute to shape capital's preferences towards pension privatization. In particular, I study the impact of institutional feedback from the public/statutory pay-as-you-go system, from existing private/supplementary occupational pensions and the influence of social partnership. Financial firms are hypothesized to be a key proponent of pension privatization, while employers may have a much more ambivalent attitude. The argument is tested using a comparative historical analysis of pension debates in Belgium and France from the end of the 1970s until the mid-2000s."

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