Pensions may be provided for in a modern society by a mix of several methods, namely by voluntary individual savings, mandatory fully-funded occupational pension systems, mandatory social security financed by pay-as-you-go, and old-fashioned hoarding in cash. Here, we call the specific mixture...

Economists have mainly focused on human capital accumulation and considerably less on the causes and consequences of human capital depreciation in late adulthood. Studying human capital depreciation over the life cycle has powerful economic consequences for decision-making in old age. Using data...

Across the world, pension systems and their reforms are in a constant state of flux driven by shifting objectives, moving reform needs, and a changing enabling environment. The ongoing worldwide financial crisis and the adjustment to an uncertain “new normal” will make future pension systems...

Old-age pensions in the NDC systems reflect the accumulated lifetime labour income. Interrupted careers and differences in the employment rates, particularly between men and women will have a significant impact on pension incomes in NDC countries. In the paper, we compare the labour market...

In January 2006, the Dutch government implemented a pension reform that substantially reduced the public pension wealth of workers born in 1950 or later. At the same time, a tax-facilitated savings plan was introduced that substantially reduced the saving costs of all workers, irrespective of...

Higher life expectancy and rapidly aging populations have led to the introduction of pension programs in developing countries in the last two decades. Using the introduction of a new public policy in China, we estimate the effects of pension benefits on individual cognition, measured by episodic...

This paper demonstrates that the link between heterogeneity in longevity and lifetime income across countries is mostly high and often increasing; that it translates into an implicit tax/subsidy, with rates reaching 20 percent and higher in some countries; that such rates risk perverting...

This paper re-examines the effects of population aging and pension reforms in an OLG model with labor market frictions. The most important feature brought about by labor market frictions is the connection between the interest rate and the unemployment rate. Exogenous shocks (such as aging)...

We provide empirical evidence that the removal of work disincentives embedded in retirement earnings tests can increase old-age labor supply considerably, but it does so at the cost of more income inequality. Causal effects are identified based on a reform of the Norwegian early retirement...

This study answers the open question of whether workers respond to financial incentives in a command economy. To do this, I evaluate pension reforms in Soviet Russia in 1964 and 1969 that allowed pensioners to receive a greater share of their pensions if they worked, resulting in a progressive...