New papers from the Social Science Research Network

"The Retention Effects of High Years of Service Cliff-Vesting Pension Plans"

JESSE M. CUNHA, Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Postgraduate School
Email: jcunha@nps.edu
AMILCAR ARMANDO MENICHINI, Naval Postgraduate School
Email: aamenich@nps.edu
ADAM CROCKETT, University of New South Wales (UNSW) - Australian Defence Force Academy
Email: adam.j.crockett@gmail.com

We study the retention effects of the Australian military’s decision to remove a 20-year cliff-vesting requirement from their retirement system in 1991. We follow to the present individuals who self-selected into and out of the 20-year cliff-vesting plan, as well as those who were forced out of the plan. Eliminating the high years of service cliff-vesting provision leads to consistently higher attrition over time.

"Early Retirement Across Europe. Does Non-Standard Employment Increase Participation of Older Workers?"
Netspar Discussion Paper No. 10-2014-044

JIM BEEN, Leiden University - Department of Economics, Netspar
Email: j.been@law.leidenuniv.nl
OLAF VAN VLIET, Leiden University - Leiden Law School, Leiden University - Department of Economics
Email: o.p.van.vliet@law.leidenuniv.nl

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 seek to contribute to existing macro-econometric studies by taking non-standard employment into account, by relating the empirical model more explicitly to optional value model theory on retirement decisions and by using a two-step IV-GMM estimator to deal with endogeneity issues. The analysis leads to the conclusion that part-time employment is negatively related to labor market withdrawal of older men. This relationship is less strong among women. Additionally, we find that part-time employment at older ages does not decrease the average actual hours worked. Furthermore, the results show a positive relationship between unemployment among older workers and early retirement similar to previous studies.