We estimate the impact of public pension systems on labor supply far from the normal retirement age by exploiting Poland's switch from a Defined Benefit to a Notional Defined Contribution scheme for men born after 1948. Using the universe of taxpayers and this sharp cohort-based discontinuity in...

This paper investigates to what extent the 1998 reform of Sweden's public old-age pension system contributed to the increase in extensive margin labor supply among older workers seen in the country in recent decades. We use a large data set containing all males and females born in Sweden between...

The International Social Security (ISS) project compares the experiences of a dozen developed countries to study Social Security Programs and Retirement Around the World. The project was launched in the mid 1990s and was motivated by decades of decline in the labor force participation rate of...

The financing problems beleaguering the public pension system have again shifted the spotlight onto the retirement age. This paper examines the impact of various reform options on the actual retirement choices of older workers. The paper focuses in particular on the long-term implications of the...

This paper shows empirically that the non-employment effects of unemployment insurance (UI) for older workers depend in a first-order way on the structure of retirement policies. Using German data, we first present reduced-form evidence of these interactions, documenting large bunching in UI...

"This ninth volume of the International Social Security series, which studies the social security and retirement experiences of 12 developed countries, examines the effects of pension reform on employment at older ages. In the two decades since the project began, a dramatic decline in men's...

Recent changes legislated in the U.S. Social Security system are changing the economic incentives to work and retire. Some older workers will respond to these new incentives by retiring at different ages. This paper evaluates the signs and magnitudes of these responses. Using a representative...

Focal retirement ages are a central feature of Social Security programs around the world, and provide a potentially powerful tool for policy makers who are interested in reforming retirement systems to address the growing funding shortfalls. But these tools often come hand in hand with...