Generous income support programs as provided by European welfare states have often been blamed to hamper employment. This paper investigates the importance of incentives inherent in the tax-benefit system for the individual decision to take up work. Using German microdata over the period...

This paper shows that increasing the normal retirement age and introducing pension deductions for retirement before normal retirement age in Germany did not prolong employment of older men. The reason for this surprising result is that employers encouraged their employees to use the bridge...

Using longitudinal data for Argentina, we estimate the labor supply reaction of spouses and children to their husband's or father's job loss. Our findings show that job loss by the household head has a positive and significant impact on the labor supply of other household members. However, it...