The increase in the full retirement age in the Social Security program provides exogenous variation in the generosity in the Disability Insurance program, based only on birth year. We exploit this variation to estimate how responsive SSDI applications are to the financial incentive to apply. We...

This paper investigates the impact of a Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP) on the age of retirement of employees covered by defined benefit pension plans provided by the City of Philadelphia. We show that the program results in significant and substantial increases in the age of retirement:...

This paper explores the effect of negative health shocks, such as heart attacks or new diagnoses of chronic illnesses, on the labor supply of both the affected spouse and his or her partner. In so doing, the paper links two important strands of the retirement literature, the large literature on...

Much as in previous recessions, the number of applications to public disability insurance programs increased sharply during the Great Recession. We find that the composition of applicants also changes across business cycles. For example, applicants during economic downturns, and especially...

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor proposed changes that would eliminate third-party incentive payments, such as 12b-1 fees, that may encourage broker-dealers to sell high-fee mutual funds to Individual Retirement Account (IRA) customers. The investment industry argues that eliminating these...