The article investigates whether compulsory old age provisions are justified from an economic point of view. According to a standard argument, some people would not provide sufficiently for their old age in the absence of a compulsory pension system – they would become a charge to the public....

This research analyses retirement behaviour in Austria based on a combined administrative dataset. Data from the Austrian social security database is merged with a dataset that contains very detailed information on all pension-relevant information on the individual level, e.g. insurance records...

One decade ago the formerly socialist, east-European economies collapsed. They are facing the diffcult and complex task to transform and to modernize their economic structures. In the beginning, many economists believed that the process of transition could be done fast and easily....

The revised Lisbon Strategy has decided upon an integrated programme of policy reforms envisaging the labor market in the context of globalization, demographic changes and fast technological progress, transposed into the integrated guidelines. Such reforms aimed at increasing the employment...

What determines the structure of labour market institutions? This paper argues that common explanations based on rent sharing are incomplete; unions, job protection, and egalitarian pay structures may have as much to do with social insurance of otherwise uninsurable risks as with rent sharing and...

The probability of income loss depends on talent and effort. Effort has positive externalities and therefore individuals are proportion to their perceived diligence. The social norm requires more effort from individuals perceived as more talented, but talent is private information and...