Following Wave I HRS respondents for six waves (12 years) so that their actual retirement can be observed shows that the actual retirement hazard is substantially higher at (and around) the age that workers identified in Wave I as the "usual" retirement age for workers like them. This is true...

Few private defined benefit pension plans commit to indexing benefits after a worker begins receiving them. Previous (now dated) research found that most plans did, nonetheless, make "voluntary" adjustments, which compensated for roughly 40 percent of the price increases experienced since...

An early retirement window is an offer, by an employer, of a special incentive to retire at a particular time, beyond that provided by the firm's pension plan. While such windows have attracted increasing attention in the academic literature and the business press, most of our current knowledge...

Workers' reports of employer size are highly correlated with true values; age of business and industry are reported with reasonable reliability. Larger employers offer more fringe benefits and more formalized personnel systems, but are less likely to match outside offers. Established employers...