The paper provides a selective survey of methods and findings concerning the impact of tax and welfare policies on employment, unemployment, and economic growth in OECD countries. The paper examines a number of facets of tax and welfare policy and concludes that cross-country macroeconomic...

argue that the offsetting effect of social security contributions on household retirement saving depends on how closely the social security programme imitates a private retirement saving plan (i.e. the ‘actuarial’ component of the social security programme) the closer the design of the...

The paper estimates public sector wage differentials and their changes over time for men and women in the United Kingdom using the New Earnings Survey. It presents estimates that are robust to unobserved workforce characteristics and that also show the impact of policy changes and cyclical...

Faced with ageing populations, OECD governments are seeking policies to increase individual retirement saving. In April 2001, the UK government introduced Stakeholder Pensions – a low cost retirement saving vehicle. The reform also changed the structure of tax-relieved contribution ceilings,...

We measure accruals in defined benefit (DB) pension plans for public and private sector workers in Britain, using typical differences in scheme rules and sector-specific lifetime age-earnings profiles by sex and educational group. We show not just that coverage by DB pension plans is greater in...

We examine the role of ill-health in retirement decisions in Britain, using the first eight waves of the British Household Panel Survey (1991-98). As self-reported health status is likely to be endogenous to the retirement decision, we instrument self-reported health by a constructed Ѩealth...

This paper examines the choice of pension scheme and job mobility in Britain. Workers in Britain can choose to belong wholly to the social security (public pension) programme, or to a company-provided plan (occupational pension), or to purchase their own individual pension. We use household...

We examine the impact of housing wealth on labor supply decisions using data on exogenous local variation in house prices merged into household panel data for Britain. Our estimates are conditioned on variations in local labor demand and income expectations as these may co-determine housing...

The paper investigates the short run responsiveness of National Health Service (NHS) nurses' labour supply to changes in wages of NHS nurses relative to wages in outside options available to nurses, utilising the panel data aspect of the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. We find the short run...