Riester pensions are voluntary, but heavily subsidized private pension schemes in Germany. They were designed as a matching defined contribution scheme to fill the emerging "pension gap" that is being generated by the gradually declining generosity of the public pay-as-you-go pensions in...

This paper describes the German public old age social security program (,Gesetzliche Rentenversicherung') and its incentive effects on retirement decisions. The paper presents the key features of the system and expresses retirement incentives in the form of accrual rates of social security...

This paper investigates the choice of living arrangements among elderly Americans. It has two specific aims. First, because health is not directly measurable and can only be described by indicators such as ADLs and IADLs, it explores a new econometric approach to model the influence of the...

Population aging and pension reform will have profound effects on international capital markets. First, demographic change alters the time path of aggregate savings within each country. Second this process may be amplified when a pension reform shifts old-age provision towards more pre-funding....

Population aging is just beginning to hit the industrialized countries in full force, and it will have a tremendous impact on capital markets. In this paper, we argue that the capital market effects of population aging are particularly strong in continental European economies such as Germany,...

Throughout the world, population aging is a major challenge that will continue well into the 21st century. While the patterns of the demographic transition are similar in most countries, timing differs substantially, in particular between industrialized and less developed countries. To the...

Previous work has documented that speaking one’s native language with an accent distinct from the mainstream is associated with lower wages. In this study, we seek to estimate the causal effect of speaking with a distinctive regional accent, disentangling the effect of the accent from that of...

The trend towards giving consumers choice about their health plans has invited research on how good they actually are at making these decisions. The introduction of Medicare Part D is an important example. Initial plan choices in this market were generally far from optimal. In this paper, we...

Despite its importance for the analysis of life-cycle behavior, stock ownership by households is poorly understood. Among other approaches to the investigation of this puzzle, recent research has elicited the expectations of stock market returns by individuals. This paper reports findings from a...

Much has been said about the stylized fact that the economically successful are not only wealthier but also healthier than the less affluent. There is little doubt about the existence of this socio-economic gradient in health, but there remains a vivid debate about its source. In this paper, we...