We provide an overview of the institutional framework in Belgium that is of relevance for labor market participation and retirement decision at older ages. We then describe key labor market indicators using data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) over the period 1983‐2013 and also present...

Recent studies analyzed the effect of retirement on mental and physical health. Some of them find that retirement yields a loss in cognitive skills while others find that retirement preserves physical health. When analysing the effect of retirement against work activity, these studies do not...

In many European countries, the labor market participation of older workers is considerably lower than the labor market participation of prime-age workers. This study analyzes the variation in labor market withdrawal of older workers across 13 European countries over the period 1995-2008. We...

We analyze the outcome of voting over the contribution to a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension system in the presence of financial and demographic shocks. The impact of shocks on pension contributions and benefits replicates major developments of pension systems around the world. A decrease in the...

Trade in goods that are not perfect substitutes can considerably change the predictions of standard neoclassical models about the effects of asymmetric demographic developments. This paper considers a relative decrease in the population size of one country, when countries specialize in the...

The world’s leading economies, both developed and developing, are engaged in an ever changing economic symbiosis that is governed in large part by demographics and technological change, but also by pension, healthcare, and other fiscal policies. This interconnected economic evolution - what...

The present paper studies the growth and efficiency consequences of pension funding with individual retirement accounts in a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic lifespan and labor income uncertainty. We distinguish between economies with rational and hyperbolic...

This paper assesses the sophistication of pension funds’ investment policies using data on 748 Dutch pension funds during the 1999–2006 period. We develop three indicators of sophistication: gross rounding of investment choices, investments in alternative sophisticated asset classes and...

The share of the older workers in the labor force has increased due to population aging and pension reforms in many countries. However, rules of the public and private pension schemes and restrictions from the employers still require large populations of older workers with possibly heteregeneous...

This paper develops a pension product that is explicit about the pre-established goals that are aimed for. The proposed product presents a trade-off that is transparent in terms of required contributions, the income level targeted and guarantees offered. Depending on participants' preferences,...