Pension benefit rules depend on individual history far more than taxes do, and age plays a much larger role in pension determination than in tax determination. Apart from some simulation studies, theoretical studies of optimal tax design typically contain neither a mandatory pension system nor...

There exists a wide variety of tax treatments of pensions across the world. And the reasons for such a range of regimes are not clear. This note reviews the general principles of pension taxes and analyses the theoretical foundations of why pension incomes ought to be taxed specifically. To do...

It is often argued that implicit taxation on continued activity of elderly workers is responsible for the widely observed trend towards early retirement. In a world of laissez-faire or of first-best efficiency, there would be no such implicit taxation. The point of this paper is that when...

This paper explores the effect of letting individuals choose their retirement age in a world of uncertainty where there exist both defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) pension plans. The paper shows that giving individuals the flexibility to determine when to retire is an important...

We develop a model where individuals differ in productivity and in longevity. Benefits from the public pay-as-you-go pension system take the form of a collective annuity, with both a contributive (Bismarckian) component (based on the worker's past earnings) and a flat (Beveridgean) part. Voters...

The European population is living longer but retiring earlier. More and more individuals are spending an increasing fraction of their life-time relying on retirement benefits. At the same time, social security programs face mounting financial difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to explain...