Common sense supports prevention policies aimed at improving survival prospects among the population. It is also widely acknowledged that an early death is a serious disadvantage, and that attention should be paid to the compensation of short-lived individuals. This paper re-examines the...

An early death is, undoubtedly, a serious disadvantage. However, the compensation of short-lived individuals has remained so far largely unexplored, probably because it appears infeasible. Indeed, short-lived agents can hardly be identified ex ante, and cannot be compensated ex post. We argue...

While the participation decision is discrete in a static context, i.e. to work or not to work, such is not the case in a life-cycle context where workers choose the fraction of their lifetime that they spend working. In this paper, I therefore characterize the optimal redistribution policy in a...

In this paper we study the interaction between economic policy and preferences when both are endogenous. Economic policy results from a vote, whereas individual preferences are influenced by specific investment in training and education. The paper focuses on a particular economic policy: the...

Most studies on the green tax reform issue point out that environmental taxes exacerbate pre-existing tax distortions, thereby increasing the welfare costs associated with the overall tax code. As a result, the optimal environmental tax should lie below the Pigovian level (or marginal social...

We use a US Social Security reform as a quasi-experiment to provide evidence on framing effects in retirement behavior. The reform increased the full retirement age (FRA) from 65 to 66 in two month increments per year of birth for cohorts born from 1938 to 1943. We find strong evidence that the...

The aim of this article is to analyze the question of career interruptions and to evaluate their impact on pension retirement for French private sector workers. Using the last French survey on households' wealth (2003-2004), we first study the career setbacks for individuals born between 1938...

Workers are exposed to the risk of permanent disability. We rely on a dynamic mechanism design approach to determine how imperfect information on health should optimally be used to improve the trade-off between inducing the able to work and providing insurance against disability. After deriving...

Health status during the working life plays a major role in the retirement decision. Significant links between professional paths, retirement age and retirement conditions (disability pension, inability pension, reduced-rate pension, or full rate by age) can be highlighted by logistic models...