This paper documents the lifetime costs on individual accounts and investment plans for a typical worker in Iceland using typical wage profiles and information on current charges obtained from the providers. The charge ratios calculated imply that costs at a current cost basis on individual...

Despite substantial increases in longevity, the age of retirement in the industrialized countries has steadily fallen throughout most of the 20th century. In France, for instance, the employment-population ratio of 55-64 year-old males fell from 74% in 1970 to 38.5% in 2000. In most other OECD...

In this paper we look at the costs and benefits for Iceland from joining the EMU from a labour-market perspective. We conclude that none of Mundell's three criteria for an optimal currency area are at present fulfilled for Iceland and the initial Euro zone. Shocks to the Icelandic economy are...

A fundamental problem for an economy based on a common property resource is the absence of a market to trade the resource. This implies that private costs are below social costs. This paper investigates possible government interventions that correct for such distortions in a neoclassical growth...

This paper introduces state-owned enterprises into an endogenous-growth model with an expanding variety of inputs. It shows that, if state firms are less efficient than private firms in organizing labour and also in adopting new technology, the rate of innovation and, hence, also the rate of...