How Have Employment Transitions for Older Workers in Germany and the UK Changed?

Extending working life is an objective for many nations. However, the UK government has recently reported only modest improvement "compared to many nations". A comparison of European, Labour Force Surveys show that Germany has reversed early retirement much faster than the UK since 2003. This was not forecast by previous researchers. In particular, Ebbinghaus' influential cross-national analysis of early retirement, published in 2006, had predicted that liberal welfare states regimes like the UK would react faster than conservative ones like Germany. A review of changes to pensions and employment policies suggests the UK puts more emphasis on recruitment of older workers, flexible working and gradual retirement while Germany puts more emphasis on retention of older workers through age-management and employment protection. The paper compares the employment transitions of older workers using data covering 1993 to 2013 from the longitudinal surveys British Household Panel Survey, Understanding Society and the German Socio-Economic Panel. It finds little evidence for the recruitment of older workers or gradual retirement in either the UK or Germany and concludes it was the greater employment protection for older workers in Germany that enabled the employment rate for older workers to increase even during the recent recession

Search for a Heavy Bottom-like Quark in pppp Collisions at s=7\sqrt{s} = 7 TeV

A search for pair-produced bottom-like quarks in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV is conducted with the CMS experiment at the LHC. The decay b' to tW is considered in this search. The b' b'-bar to tW^- t-bar W^+ process can be identified by the distinctive signature of trileptons and same-sign dileptons. With a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34 inverse picobarns, no excess above the standard model background predictions is observed and a b' quark with a mass between 255 and 361 GeV/c^2 is excluded at the 95% confidence level