It is often argued that the tax on continued work should be removed by implementing actuarially fair schemes. However, these schemes cannot help fund the expected Social Security deficit. This paper proposes to give individuals only a fraction of the marginal actuarially fair incentives in case...

This paper presents a theoretical foundation and empirical evidence in favor of the view that the tax on continued activity not only decreases the participation rate by inducing early retirement, but also badly affects the employment rate of older workers just before early retirement age....

This paper shows that optimal unemployment insurance contracts are age-dependent. Older workers have only a few years left on the labor market prior to retirement. This short horizon implies a more digressive replacement ratio. However, there is a sufficiently short distance to retirement for...

Since the last recession, it is usually argued that older workers are less affected by the economic downturn because their unemployment rate rose less than the one of prime-age workers. This view is a myth: older workers are more sensitive to the business cycle. We document volatilities of...

This study investigates job polarization in the United States and in France. In the data, the dynamics of employment shares for abstract, routine, and manual jobs appear very similar in the two countries. This similarity actually hides major differences in the dynamics of employment levels by...

In this paper, we aim to shed light on the relative contribution of the separation and job finding rates to French unemployment at business cycle frequencies by using administrative data on registered unemployment and labor force surveys. We first investigate the fluctuations in steady state...

Using a general equilibrium heterogeneous agent model featuring health production, we quantify the relative contribution of price distortions in the health market, TFP and other health risks in explaining cross-country differences in health expenditure (as a share of GDP) and health status....

This paper extends Pissarides (1990)'s matching model by considering two sectors (routine and manual) and workers' occupational choices, in the context of skill-biased demand shifts, to the detriment of routine jobs and in favour of manual jobs because of technological changes. The theoretical...

We study fiscal devaluation in a small-open economy with labor market search frictions. Our analysis shows the key role of both dimensions in shaping the optimal tax scheme. By reducing labor market distortions, the tax reform is welfare-improving. Yet, as it makes imports more expensive, fiscal...

This paper extends the job creation - job destruction approach to the labor market to take into account the life-cycle of workers. Forward looking decisions about hiring and firing depend on the time over which to recoup adjustment costs. The equilibrium is typically featured by increasing...