This paper studies the role of social security and tax and transfer programs for understanding cross-country differences in labor supply late in the life cycle. First, we use the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) as well as the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to...

Consider the following facts. In 1950 rich countries attained an average of 8.1 years of schooling whereas poor countries attained 1.3 years --a 6-fold difference. By 2005, the difference in schooling declined to 2-fold even though the per-capita income gap did not decrease. What explains...

We develop a model of the structural transformation with three sectors: agriculture, industry, and services. In addition to reallocation across sectors over time, the model also features a reallocation of consumption across services that differ in their labor intensity and a distribution sector....