The late 1980s saw a major shift in pension provision in the United Kingdom, when for the first time individuals were permitted to opt out of part of the social security program into individual retirement saving accounts (Personal Pensions). At the same time, membership of company-provided...

We examine the impact of housing wealth on labour supply using exogenous local variations in house prices and household panel data for Britain. Our analysis controls for variations in local labour demand and income expectations which might co-determine house prices and labour supply. We find...

The paper examines projections of the fiscal liabilities of public pension programmes in a number of OECD countries. It investigates the reasons why many countries have built up such liabilities in the past and critically appraises the future projections of pension costs. It examines the...

Books reviewed: H. Bateman, G. Kingston and J. Piggott, eds., Forced Saving: Mandating Private Retirement Incomes, Richard Disney, author Takatoshi Ito and Anne O. Krueger, eds., Regional and National Capital Flows: Macroeconomic Causes and Consequences, Magdalena Polan, author Angus Maddison,...

We study entry, exit and survival of UK manufacturing establishments from 1986 to 1991 using the newly released ARD database. We document patterns of entry and exit across industries and over time. We estimate an augmented Cox proportional hazard to examine the survival of new plants in the UK...

This paper surveys a dozen international comparative studies of poverty, income distribution and older people in industrialized countries using data up to the mid-1990s. It addresses a series of questions. At what level are the incomes of the elderly relative to the population as a whole? How...

Books reviewed: Finis Welch (ed.), The Causes and Consequences of Increasing Inequality S. Togan and V. N. Balasubramanyam (eds.), Turkey and Central and Eastern European Countries in Transition Towards Membership of the EMU Yair Mundlak, Agriculture and Economic Growth: Theory and Measurement...

The paper estimates public sector wage differentials and their changes over time for men and women in the United Kingdom using the New Earnings Survey. It presents estimates that are robust to unobserved workforce characteristics and that also show the impact of policy changes and cyclical...

Faced with ageing populations, OECD governments are seeking policies to increase individual retirement saving. In April 2001, the UK government introduced Stakeholder Pensions – a low cost retirement saving vehicle. The reform also changed the structure of tax-relieved contribution ceilings,...

We measure accruals in defined benefit (DB) pension plans for public and private sector workers in Britain, using typical differences in scheme rules and sector-specific lifetime age-earnings profiles by sex and educational group. We show not just that coverage by DB pension plans is greater in...