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Demographic and fiscal pressures make pension reform in Europe an important issue. The need for reform represents an opportunity for countries to reconsider the design of their pension systems and reduce the distortions they induce in labour and savings markets. This paper examines the economic effects of public pension systems in the four largest European economies using a general equilibrium simulation model with overlapping generations. We focus particularly on the aggregate effects of microeconomic distortions introduced by pension systems. To organize the analysis, we consider what would happen if the different governments harmonized their respective pension systems, moving to a system with parameters equal to the average of those for individual countries.