Due to a tax law implemented in 1998, Dutch employers can claim an extra tax deduction when they train employees aged 40 years or older. This causes a discontinuity in a firm's cost of training an employee. This discontinuity is exploited to identify two effects: the effect of the tax deduction...

The paper asks why retirement can be so abrupt in countries such as France (1/2% of the workforce over 65), yet staged in Japan (8% over 65). We find part of the answer in tax laws that prevent people working and receiving a pension, and make little allowance for fair pension increases if...

It is often argued that implicit taxation on continued activity of elderly workers is responsible for the widely observed trend towards early retirement. In a world of laissez-faire or of first-best efficiency, there would be no such implicit taxation. The point of this paper is that when...