Norway. The new system fulfils several criteria for a defined contribution scheme. Earnings from all years in work count in the accumulation of entitlements, and an actuarial rule converting the final balance into an annuity is introduced. But the pension system will still be a part of the...

We investigate the impact of plant downsizing on disability pension utilization in Norway. Plant downsizing substantially increases the disability entry rate of workers in affected plants. Workers originally employed in plants that closed between 1993 and 1998 were 27.9 percent more likely to...

A precautionary saving model is extended to include old-age pensions and provides the framework for an empirical analysis of the relation between old-age pensions and private consumption. Norwegian macro-data for socioeconomic groups of households are used to estimate consumption functions for...

The Norwegian pension reform of 2006 intends to (1) improve long run fiscal sustainability by reducing the growth in public old-age expenditures, (2) strengthen labour supply incentives, and (3) maintain the main redistributive features of the present system. We assess to what extent the reform...

In this paper, we use a binary choice panel data model to analyze married individuals.retirement behavior in Norway when a new option, AFP early retirement becomes available. We focus our study on the influence of the spouse.s characteristics on early retirement behavior. We find the directions...

Large petroleum revenues make Norway an enviable fiscal loner. The fiscal policy rule adopted from 2001 transforms petroleum wealth into foreign assets, and only the real return on the financial fund should be spent annually. Despite this ambitious saving of the petroleum wealth, we find it...

Ageing combined with generous welfare state schemes makes the present fiscal policy in Norway unsustainable, despite large government petroleum revenues. We estimate to what extent two suggested reforms of the public pension system improve fiscal sustainability and stimulate employment, two main...

Any contribution to a pay-as-you-go pension system may be considered mandatory savings to the extent that it gives a claim to a future benefit. Contributors to the economic literature have argued that an increase in this savings component will lower implicit marginal tax rates, thereby reducing...

This paper presents results from an evaluation of a Norwegian initiative to combat poverty launched in 2003. Central to the plan is a broad spectrum of rehabilitation and activation measures intended to help long-term social security recipients from welfare to work. We illuminate short-term...

Assessments of fiscal sustainability (FS) problems should be based on present values of government revenues and expenditures over an infinite horizon. The paper shows that realistic assumptions imply that the growth rate of government expenditure components may exceed both the steady state...