In January 2006, the Dutch government implemented a pension reform that substantially reduced the public pension wealth of workers born in 1950 or later. At the same time, a tax-facilitated savings plan was introduced that implied a large savings subsidy for all workers, irrespective of birth...

This paper uses panel data from the pan-European SHARE survey to study labor market behavior of older male self-employed vis-a-vis wage employed workers. We find the self-employed to work longer hours, to be more flexible in their hours allocation, and to retire later in all countries. We relate...

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

We present a theory of the relation between health and retirement that generates testable predictions regarding the interaction of health, wealth and financial incentives in retirement decisions. The theory predicts (i) that wealthier individuals (compared to poorer individuals) are more likely...

Many OECD countries are facing decreases in the employment rates of disabled workers. To uncover the driving forces of these trends, this paper estimates Age-Period- Cohort (APC) models on administrative data of Disability Insurance (DI) application cohorts for the Netherlands between 1999 and...

This study explored the psychological mechanisms that underlie the retirement planning and saving tendencies of Dutch and American workers. Participants were 988 Dutch and 429 Americans, 25-64 years of age. Analyses were designed to: (a) examine the extent to which structural variables were...

This paper focuses on the relation between worker's productivity and retirement decision. Assuming that productivity follows geometric Brownian motion with drift, there exists such a level of productivity for which it is optimal to retire. The worker buys an insurance, which gives a constant...

This study investigates whether many people fear an unexpectedshock in their financial situation around retirement and whether therelated expectations and realizations match each other. We use theDutch Social Economic Panel survey data, where expectations aboutthe next year's financial situation...

In the Netherlands a transition takes place fromearly retirement schemes, which are characterizedby high implicit tax rates to schemes that have ahigher degree of actuarial fairness. in this paperwe look at the impact of this change at the laborparticipation rates of 55 to 65 years old...