The effect of pension rules on retirement monetary incentives with an application to pension reforms in Spain

In this work we theoretically disentangle the effects of pension provisions on a variety of financial incentives to retirement, trying to reconcile them with some key Spanish retirement patterns. We find that the "average" individual, who is never affected by any cap of contributions or benefits, has weak incentives to retire early and strong incentives to retire at the normal retirement age. Alternatively, individuals at the bottom of the wage distribution have strong incentives to retire as early as possible, because ot the interaction between age-related penalties and the minimun pension. Both findings perfectly accommodate the retirement hazard of medium and low earners respectively. In contrast, high earners (those that have their contributions capped) despite having strong incentives to retire at the Early Retirement Age, do not do so. This is because, for those workers, financial incentives are not a good proxy for the marginal utility from working. Finally, we analyze the reasons behind the failure of the 1997 reform in improving the sustainability of the Spanish public pension system

Strike outcomes and wage settlements in Spain

This paper analyzes collective bargaining using Spanish firm level data. Central to the analysis are the joint determination of wage and strike outcomes in a dynamic framework and the possibility of segregate wage equation for strike and non-strike outcomes. Conditional to strikes taking place, we confirm a negative relationship between strike duration and wage changes in a dynamic context. Furthermore, we find selection in wage equations induced by the strike outcome. In this sense, the possibility of wage determination processes being different in strike and non-strike samples is not rejected by the data. In particular, wage dynamics are of opposite sing in both strike and non-strike equations. Finally, we find evidence of a 0.33 percentage points wage change strike premium.Wage setting, strike, collective bargaining, panel data, selection

The determinants of pricing in pharmaceuticals : are U.S. prices really higher than those of Canada?

This paper studies price determination in pharmaceutical markets using data for 25 countries, six years and a comprehensive list of products from the MIDAS IMS database. We show that market power and the quality of the product has a significantly positive impact of prices. The nationality of the producer appears to have a small and often insignificant impact on prices, which suggests that countries which regulates prices have relatively little power to do it in a way that advances narrow national interest. We produce a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon based on the fact that low negotiated prices in a country would have a knock-on effect in other markets, and is thus strongly resisted by producers. Another key finding is that the U.S. has prices that are not significantly higher than those of countries with similar income levels. This, together with the former observation on the effect of the nationality of producers casts doubt on the ability of countries to pursue “free-riding" regulation

Membrane Fission: A Computational Complexity Perspective

Membrane fission is a process by which a biological membrane is split into two new ones in the manner that the content of the initial membrane is separated and distributed between the new membranes. Inspired by this biological phenomenon, membrane separation rules were considered in membrane computing. In this work, we investigate cell-like P systems with symport/antiport rules and membrane separation rules from a computational complexity perspective. Specifically, we establish a limit on the efficiency of such P systems which use communication rules of length at most two, and we prove the computational efficiency of this kind of models when using communication rules of length at most three. Hence, a sharp borderline between tractability and NP–hardness is provided in terms of the length of communication rules.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2012-3743

Claim, offer and information in wage bargaining

A stylized private-information model on the determination of the initial works council claim and the initial firm (counter) offer is analyzed in the context of the Spanish Collective Bargaining system. The Spanish system forces agents to make initial offers at the beginning ot the negotiation process. Thus initial firm offers are expected to reveal very little information. Our findings confirm such a guess. Morever, we found that initial offers crucially depend on aggregate bargaining conditions, price expectations and those variables that reflect the characteristics of the negotiation unit. However, the latter set of variables enters differently in both offer equations

The effect of pension rules on retirement monetary incentives with an application to pension reforms in Spain

In this work we theoretically disentangle the effects of pension provisions on a variety of financial incentives to retirement, trying to reconcile them with some key Spanish retirement patterns. We find that the «average» individual, who is never affected by any cap of contributions or benefits, has weak incentives to retire early and strong incentives to retire at the normal retirement age. Alternatively, individuals at the bottom of the wage distribution have strong incentives to retire as early as possible, as a result of the interaction between age-related penalties and the minimum pension. Both findings perfectly accommodate the retirement hazard of medium and low earners respectively. In contrast, high earners (those that have their contributions capped) do not retire early despite having strong incentives to do so. This is because, for those workers, financial incentives are not a good proxy for the marginal utility from working. Finally, we analyze the reasons behind the failure of the 1997 reform in improving the sustainability of the Spanish public pension system.retirement, Social Security, Monetary incentives, Pension Reform, Spain

The effect of pension rules on retirement monetary incentives with an application to pension reforms in Spain.

In this work we theoretically disentangle the effects of pension provisions on a variety of financial incentives to retirement, trying to reconcile them with some key Spanish retirement patterns. We find that the "average" individual, who is never affected by any cap of contributions or benefits, has weak incentives to retire early and strong incentives to retire at the normal retirement age. Alternatively, individuals at the bottom of the wage distribution have strong incentives to retire as early as possible, because ot the interaction between age-related penalties and the minimun pension. Both findings perfectly accommodate the retirement hazard of medium and low earners respectively. In contrast, high earners (those that have their contributions capped) despite having strong incentives to retire at the Early Retirement Age, do not do so. This is because, for those workers, financial incentives are not a good proxy for the marginal utility from working. Finally, we analyze the reasons behind the failure of the 1997 reform in improving the sustainability of the Spanish public pension system.

An evaluation of the life-cycle effects of minimum pensions on retirement behaviour: Extended Version

In this paper we explore the effects of the minimum pension program on welfare and retirement in Spain. This is done with a stylized life-cycle model which provides a convenient analytical characterization of optimal behavior. We use data from the Spanish Social Security to estimate the behavioral parameters of the model and then simulate the changes induced by the minimum pension in aggregate retirement patterns. The impact is substantial: there is a threefold increase in retirement at 60 (the age of first entitlement) with respect to the economy without minimum pensions, and total early retirement (before or at 60) is almost 50% larger.Retirement, life cycle model, minimum pension, structural estimation

Extremely broad radio recombination maser lines toward the high-velocity ionized jet in Cepheus A HW2

We present the first detection of the H40a, H34a and H31a radio recombination lines (RRLs) at millimeter wavelengths toward the high-velocity, ionized jet in the Cepheus A HW2 star forming region. From our single-dish and interferometric observations, we find that the measured RRLs show extremely broad asymmetric line profiles with zero-intensity linewidths of ~1100 kms-1. From the linewidths, we estimate a terminal velocity for the ionized gas in the jet of >500 kms-1, consistent with that obtained from the proper motions of the HW2 radio jet. The total integrated line-to-continuum flux ratios of the H40a, H34a and H31a lines are 43, 229 and 280 kms-1, clearly deviating from LTE predictions. These ratios are very similar to those observed for the RRL maser toward MWC349A, suggesting that the intensities of the RRLs toward HW2 are affected by maser emission. Our radiative transfer modeling of the RRLs shows that their asymmetric profiles could be explained by maser emission arising from a bi-conical radio jet with a semi-aperture angle of 18 deg, electron density distribution varying as r^(-2.11) and turbulent and expanding wind velocities of 60 and 500 kms-1.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ

The Determinants of Pricing in Pharmaceuticals: Are U.S. Prices Really Higher than Those of Canada?

This paper studies price determination in pharmaceutical markets using data for 25 countries, six years and a comprehensive list of products from the MIDAS IMS database. We show that market power and the quality of the product has a significantly positive impact of prices. The nationality of the producer appears to have a small and often insignificant impact on prices, which suggests that countries which regulates prices have relatively little power to do it in a way that advances narrow national interest. We produce a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon based on the fact that low negotiated prices in a country would have a knock-on effect in other markets, and is thus strongly resisted by producers. Another key finding is that the U.S. has prices that are not significantly higher than those of countries with similar income levels. This, together with the former observation on the effect of the nationality of producers casts doubt on the ability of countries to pursPharmaceutical prices