After nearly a full century of decline, the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) of older men in the United States leveled off in the 1980s, and began to increase in the late 1990s. We use a time series of cross sections from 1962 to 2005 to model the LFPR of men aged 55-69, with the aim of...

This paper discusses the specificities of the labor market for older workers. It discusses the implications of those specificities for the effect of labor market institutions on the employability of those workers. It shows that while unemployment benefits indexed backwards and hiring costs are...

Is there evidence that households adjust their asset portfolios just prior to retirement in response to a means-tested public pension? We address this question by estimating a system of asset equations constrained to add up to net worth. We find little evidence that in 2006 healthy households or...

Many pay-as-you-go pension systems have increased or plan to increase their legal retirement age (LRA) to address the financial consequences of ageing. Although the success of these policies is ultimately determined at the labour market, little is known about the effects of higher LRAs at the...

We look at the effect of the 2000 repeal of the earnings test above the normal retirement age (NRA) on retirement expectations of male workers in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Using administrative records on Social Security benefit entitlements linked to the HRS survey data, we can...

As evidence is accumulating that subjective expectations influence behavior and that these expectations are sometimes biased, it becomes policy-relevant to know how to influence individuals' expectations. Information in the media is likely to affect how people picture the future. This paper...

Using data from three waves of the General Social Survey on retirement and older workers (1994, 2002 and 2007), we document the evolution of retirement patterns over the last three decades. We combined the analysis of retirement ages of actual retirees with data on expected retirement ages of...

We analyze lifetime earnings histories of white males during 1960-2010 and categorize the labor force status of every worker as either working full-time, partially retired or fully retired. We find that the fraction of partially retired workers has risen dramatically (from virtually 0 to 15...

This paper develops dynamic structural models - an option value model and a dynamic programming model - of the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) application timing decision. We estimate the time to application from the point at which a health condition first begins to affect the kind...

This paper analyzes the importance of policy variables in the context of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) application timing decision. Previously, we explicitly modeled the optimal timing of SSDI application using dynamic structural models. We estimated these models using data from...