People in the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden work more than the countries’ high tax rates would lead us to predict. This observation is explained by a shared belief system that emphasises women’s rights to labour market participation.

In order to estimate labour supply responses among older people we have employed a very simple model of retirement decisions that can be estimated on a single cross-section sample, and still be given a structural interpretation in terms of inter-temporal decisions. The model is estimated on...