We document the presence of a trade-off between unemployment benefits (UB) and employment protection legislation (EPL) in the provision of insurance against labor market risk. Different countries' locations along this trade-off represent stable, hard to modify, politico-economic equilibria. We...

We provide a long term perspective on the individual retirement behavior and on the future of retirement. In a Markovian political economic theoretical framework, in which incentives to retire early are embedded, we derive a political equilibrium with positive social security contribution rates...

We document the presence of a trade-o. between unemployment benefits (UB) and employment protection legislation (EPL) in the provision of insurance against labor market risk. Di.erent countries’ locations along this trade-o. represent stable, hard to modify, politico-economic equilibria. We...

Early retirement represents a policy response to the appearance of a mass of redundant middle- aged workers, who were not entitled to a pension transfer in their old age. This policy is distortionary, since it reduces the incentive to accumulate human capital, and thus decreases economic growth....

The aim of this paper is to compute, using an accounting exercise, the effect of immigrants over the three factors, which determine the income per capita (demographic factor, employment rate and productivity). We saw that immigration has had a positive effect over the two first, but negative...

We analyze risk sharing and endogenous fiscal spending in a two-region model with sequentially complete markets. Fiscal policy is determined by majority voting. When policy setting is decentralized, regions choose fiscal spending in an attempt to manipulate security prices. This leads to...

Generous early retirement provisions account for a large proportion of the drop in the labor force participation of elderly workers. The aim of this paper is to provide a positive theory of early retirement. We suggest that the political support for generous early retirement provisions relies...

We provide a long-term perspective on the individual retirement behaviour and on the future of retirement. In a Markovian political economic theoretical framework, in which incentives to retire early are embedded, we derive a political equilibrium with positive social security contribution rates...

We provide a long term perspective on the individual retirement behavior and on the future of early retirement. In a cross-country sample, we find that total pension spending depends positively on the degree of early retirement and on the share of elderly in the population, which increase the...