The importance of contemporary trends in fertility and female labour supply is well recognised. Unfortunately, our understanding of these inter-related phenomena has been hampered by the difficulties that are associated with formulating a structural model of behaviour that reflects the joint...

This paper discusses the way in which payments from pooled annuity funds need to be adjusted to take account of the fact that future mortality rates are uncertain. Mortalityadjusted annuities, as we describe payments from the pooled fund are variable annuities in which aggregate mortality risk...

There is a growing consensus based on extensive experimental evidence that people are generally influenced by myopia when making decisions of an intertemporal nature.

Recent pensions policy debate in the United Kingdom has emphasised the role of behavioural myopia in justifying state involvement in retirement provision (e.g. Pensions Commission, 2005, pp. 68-69, and op.cit.). In this regard, it appears that public debate has gotten slightly ahead of the...

From a household point of view the two major changes associated with the economic disruption of the last eighteen months are, first, that the unemployment rate and presumably the risk of unemployment have risen sharply, and secondly, that there have been large declines in asset prices. It is...

This paper describes the National Institute’s Benefit and Tax Model, NIBAX and provides results of studies using it to explore i) the introduction of low-cost pensions similar to Personal Accounts, ii) the effects of the abolition of the 10p income tax rate and iii) the consequences of rising...

This paper describes a structural dynamic microsimulation model of the household that has been developed at the National Institute for exploring behavioural responses to various aspects of the economic environment, particularly in relation to tax and benefits policy. The model is based upon the...

The design of welfare benefits is a tricky business. In this respect, James Meade placed particular emphasis on the importance of avoiding excessive distortions to the price of labour. Nevertheless, Meade noted that means testing in the delivery of welfare benefits is likely to be desirable in...

A dynamic microsimulation model of cohort earnings based on the Australian population aged between 20 and 55 years is described. A highly parsimonious modular structure is adopted to facilitate sensitivity analysis and enable additional characteristics to be added, should they be desired....

Means testing plays an important role in the UK state pension system. We use a dynamic programming model to consider the long-term behavioural effects of a recent policy reform that reduced the marginal tax rates on private income of means tested retirement benefits from 100% to 40%. Our...