Nonparametric Evidence on the Effects of Financial Incentives on Retirement Decisions

Dayanand S. Manoli, Andrea Weber

NBER Working Paper No. 17320
Issued in August 2011
NBER Program(s):   AG   LS   PE

This paper presents new empirical evidence on the effects of retirement benefits on labor force participation decisions. We use administrative data on the census of private sector employees in Austria and variation from mandated discontinuous changes in retirement benefits from the Austrian pension system. We present graphical evidence documenting labor supply responses to the policy discontinuities. Next, we develop nonparametric procedures to estimate labor supply elasticities based on the graphical evidence and mandated financial incentives. We estimate elasticities of 0.12 for men and 0.38 for women. These relatively low elasticities highlight that many retirement decisions are likely to be affected by factors beyond only financial incentives from retirement benefits.

The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this.  You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email.

You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.

Acknowledgments

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX