Unemployment insurance recipients in the Netherlands were for a long time exempted from the requirement to actively search for a job when they reached the age of 57.5. We study how this exemption affected the job finding rates of the recipients involved. We find evidence that the job finding...

In this paper we use a dynamic structural life-cycle model to analyze the employment, fiscal and welfare effects induced by unemployment insurance. The model features a detailed specification of the tax and transfer system, including unemployment insurance benefits which depend on an...

This paper investigates whether individuals at the end of working life choose self-employment out of necessity and to what degree job search requirements for unemployment benefits induce people to become self-employed. For this purpose we analyze labor market transitions for people between the...

Are there negative health effects from losing the job? We analyze the causal effect of job displacement on diabetes incidence and prevalence. Type 2 diabetes is an illness that is directly affected by lifestyle factors and psychosocial stress, and with severe sideeffects deteriorating the...

Demographic projections forecast a doubling of the dependency ratio until 2050 as well as an increase of 10% in population due to longer life expectancy in Switzerland. To quantify the effects on social security and public finances, we use a computational overlapping generations model with five...

Using Italian data, we estimate an option value model to quantify the effect of financial incentives on retirement choices. As far as we know, this is the first empirical study to estimate the conditional multiple-years model put forward by Stock and Wise (1990). This implies that we account for...

The paper studies retirement behavior of wage‐earners in Belgium – for the first time using rich survey data to explore retirement incentives as faced by individuals. Specifically, we use SHARE data to estimate a model à la Stock and Wise (1990). Exploring the longitudinal nature of...

Both the impacts of financial incentives and health on transitions into retirement and inactivity by older workers have been studied extensively in a variety of contexts but far less is known about their interaction. Guided by the option value framework, we use Spanish data from the European...

As evidence is accumulating that subjective expectations influence behavior and that these expectations are sometimes biased, it becomes policy-relevant to know how to influence individuals' expectations. Information in the media is likely to affect how people picture the future. This paper...

We analyze expectations of the Dutch population of ages 25 and older concerning the future generosity of Dutch state and occupational pensions, the two main pillars of the Dutch pension system. Since the summer of 2006, monthly survey data were collected on the expectations of Dutch households...