This paper studies the evolution of early retirement due to disease and injury in the German labor force between 1988 and 2004. Using data from the German Federation of Public Pension Providers, the IMS Health Drug Launches database and the WHO Mortality Database, we show that new drug launches...

Recent calculations have suggested that the German federal government has saved roughly EUR 90-100 billion, cumulatively, due to low bond yields since the onset of the Euro crisis. In order to determine the contribution of the "flight to quality" to this sum, we define the flight to quality as a...