Early retirement is predominantly considered as the result of incentives set by social security and the tax system. But people seem to retire early even in the absence of such distortions as the Swiss example demonstrates. We look for determinants of early retirement, in particular the role of...

We explore the incentives countries face in trade litigation within the new WTO Dispute Settlement System. Our analysis yields a number of interesting predictions. First, because sanctions are ruled out during the litigation process, the Dispute Settlement System does not preclude all new trade...

Switzerland is one of the few countries with a relatively mature funded pension scheme. This paper offers a short description of the Swiss system, highlighting two specific areas for which previous experience is particularly valuable. Taking the Swiss example, firstly, it illustrates the...

In 1998, the Swiss voters approved of an increase in female retirement age from 62 to 64. The referendum, being on a single issue only, offers a unique opportunity to explore the political feasibility of pension reforms and to apply theoretical models of life-cycle decision making. Estimates...

Social security systems in most industrialized countries face severe financial problems due to adverse demographic changes. The increase in old-age dependency, however, will be spread over a period of approximately 50 years. The degree of technological progress necessary to offset the negative...

We study the impact of an anticipated "baby boom" in an overlapping generations economy. The rise of the working population lowers the wage, and the high demand for assets causes a rise in the price of capital which will be reversed when the baby boomers leave the work-force. However, the swings...

Early retirement is predominantly considered to be the result of incentives set by social security and the tax system. But the Swiss example demonstrates that the incidence of early retirement has dramatically increased even in the absence of institutional changes. We argue that an actuarially...

In a dynamic model of assignment problems, small deviations suffice to move between stable outcomes. This result is used to obtain no-selection and almost-no-selection results under the stochastic stability concept for uniform and payoff-dependent errors. There is no-selection of partner or...

This paper documents a positive relationship between mineral resources abundance and individualistic values in the United States. We refer to "individualism" as the set of values opposed to public intervention in income allocation and favorable to individual selfresponsibility. We show that...

It is shown that a matching market with contracts may be embedded into a matching market with salaries under weaker assumptions on preferences than substitutability. In particular, the result applies to the recently studied problem of cadet-to-branch matching. As an application of the embedding...