Dangerous Flexibility – Retirement Reforms Reconsidered | Munich Center for the Economics of Aging - MEA
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Dangerous Flexibility – Retirement Reforms Reconsidered

Inhalt

Flexible retirement is supposed to increase labour supply of older workers without touching the third rail of pension politics, the highly unpopular increase of the retirement age. While this may have intuitive appeal, this paper shows that it might be wishful thinking. Economic theory tells us that flexible retirement policies can have a zero or positive effect on labour force participation (LFP) while the effect on hours worked can be positive or negative depending on the distribution of leisure preferences. Thus, the overall effect is ex ante unclear. Empirical results from nine OECD countries show that the effect on LFP is ex post small and positive while the effect on hours worked is negative. Overall, there is no evidence of the desired positive effect on total labour supply (TLS). We conclude that the flexibility reforms enacted so far are dangerous instruments if one wants to increase TLS because they postpone or even replace the instalment of more effective policies and may, even worse, reduce total labour volume.

Publikationsdetails
Boersch-Supan

Axel Börsch-Supan

csm_bucher_01_c574cfaa96

Tabea Bucher-Koenen

csm_high_res-img_3059_Hochformat_9b753aaf17

Nicolas Goll

Kutlu-Koc

Vesile Kutlu Koc

2018
S. 315–355
33
Economic Policy