Abstract Standard economic models predict that individuals smooth consumption over the life cycle. In contrast, there exists controversial empirical evidence showing that consumption declines at retirement. This paper investigates whether there is evidence for this so-called Retirement...

Reducing the eligibility age for pension benefits is considered by many as a policy that will discourage labor supply by mature workers. This paper analyzes a recent Norwegian pension reform which effectively lowered the eligibility age of retirement from 67 to 62 for a group of workers. For the...

This paper studies the economic effects on re-employment and program substitution behavior among elderly displaced workers who exogenously lose eligibility for their early retirement option. We use detailed Norwegian matched employer-employee data containing information on bankruptcy dates and...

This paper investigates the welfare effects of two types of pension reforms aimed at addressing challenges due to aging populations. The study uses a framework by Kolsrud et al. (2024), decomposing welfare into consumption smoothing and fiscal externality effects. Norwegian administrative data...

This paper analyzes the labor market participation behavior of retiring couples in Norway. To account for the unobserved heterogeneity in decision-making structure within the household, I formulate a mixed model by assuming there are two types of households, the cooperative type and the...

This paper aims to provide an empirical analysis of the joint retire ment behavior of working couples in Norway. A dynamic programming model is speci.ed and estimated on micro data. The estimation results show that a model, which uses only measures of economic incentives: wages and pension...

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...

A much higher old-age dependency ratio together with more generous pension benefits will lead to a substantial increase in the future pension burden in Norway. The challenges of financing the increasing pension expenditures depend on the development in demographic characteristics like fertility,...

A much higher old-age dependency ratio, together with more generous pension benefits, will lead to a substantial increase in the future public pension expenditures burden in Norway. A pension reform implemented from 2010 will imply a shift to a quasi-actuarial system, seeking to neutralise the...

I study the effects of the level of disability benefits on disability uptake. Estimation of such effects is difficult because individual levels of disability pension benefits are closely related to individual characteristics that may also affect disability uptake through other mechanisms. I...