Transition from Work to Retirement in EU25

The policy agenda of extending working lives requires a holistic understanding of factors underlying the decision of older workers to withdraw from work and to retire. This brief paper presents employment patterns and trends of older people across EU Member States and identifies policy initiatives that would encourage more flexible and later retirement. The descriptive empirical evidence (from the EU Labour Force Survey) indicates that there are a broad range of experiences in EU countries with respect to the employment of older workers (those aged 50 and over). Strikingly, in the majority of EU15 countries, close to one-half of those of 50 and over are either unemployed or inactive, with reliance either on early retirement pensions or on social assistance benefits. The recent pension reforms in a number of these countries have increased the retirement age and this is likely to induce older workers to work longer. There is already some evidence that the effective retirement age is on the increase. Results suggest that the increase in older workers' employment is stronger for women than for men, and also for more highly educated. In most instances older workers either tend to be in full-time employment or inactive with very few occupying intermediate positions. Although there is some evidence of a gradual transition towards retirement, there is still a relatively minor proportion of the work force taking advantage of this, as well over 70% of men and around 55% of women in employment in their early 60s worked 35 hours a week or more. The policy aim should therefore be to encourage 'flexible and later retirement'. Additional incentives need to be provided so that people are not only able to move between jobs in later working life but also able to work part-time, without losing their entitlement to benefits (such as early retirement pensions). Such policy incentives will enable workers to avoid the phenomenon of a 'cliff-edge' fall into retirement that many of them often face.Retirement, Retirement Policies, Labour Force and Employment, Size, and Structure

Intended versus unintended consequences of migration restriction policies: evidence from a natural experiment in Indonesia

This article studies the consequences of restrictions to migration at the origin on labor market outcomes and school enrolment in origin communities. Our difference-in-differences specification exploits the differential impact across districts in Indonesia of a reform that restricted the migration of Indonesian female domestic workers towards Saudi Arabia in 2011. Our results suggest that this reform did not lead to higher unemployment in Indonesia, but it increased the proportion of workers employed in informal jobs and in agriculture. No detectable change in the consumption patterns of Indonesian households appears from our analysis, suggesting that rural areas in Indonesia could absorb the sudden increase in the availability of workforce. Our findings also show an increase in junior secondary school enrolment of both males and females, arguably reflecting the importance of the maternal presence in the household for the investment in human capital of children

Work incentives at the extensive and intensive margin in Europe: the role of taxes, benefits and population characteristics

Tax and benefit systems play an important role in determining work incentives at both, the extensive and the intensive margin of labour supply. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive comparative analysis of work incentives in the EU. Our analysis makes use of microsimulation techniques and representative household surveys from all 28 EU countries to compare the distribution of short- and long-term participation tax rates and marginal effective tax rates across population subgroups. We focus on people currently in work and characterise the population facing low work incentives in each country. Our results highlight the large variation in the distribution of work incentives across EU countries, explained not only by differences in the design of tax-benefit systems, but also by the characteristics of the labour force across countries. Unemployment insurance benefits contribute substantially to short-term participation tax rates and explain on average 20 percentage point difference between work incentives of short- vs. long-term unemployment. Our analysis further highlights the need to use microdata to study differences across countries in terms of the population subgroups facing low incentives to work with the aim to inform the policy debate on potential reforms to make work pay

Jet energy measurement with the ATLAS detector in proton-proton collisions at root s=7 TeV

The jet energy scale and its systematic uncertainty are determined for jets measured with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 7TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 38 pb-1. Jets are reconstructed with the anti-kt algorithm with distance parameters R=0. 4 or R=0. 6. Jet energy and angle corrections are determined from Monte Carlo simulations to calibrate jets with transverse momenta pT≥20 GeV and pseudorapidities {pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy systematic uncertainty is estimated using the single isolated hadron response measured in situ and in test-beams, exploiting the transverse momentum balance between central and forward jets in events with dijet topologies and studying systematic variations in Monte Carlo simulations. The jet energy uncertainty is less than 2. 5 % in the central calorimeter region ({pipe}η{pipe}<0. 8) for jets with 60≤pT<800 GeV, and is maximally 14 % for pT<30 GeV in the most forward region 3. 2≤{pipe}η{pipe}<4. 5. The jet energy is validated for jet transverse momenta up to 1 TeV to the level of a few percent using several in situ techniques by comparing a well-known reference such as the recoiling photon pT, the sum of the transverse momenta of tracks associated to the jet, or a system of low-pT jets recoiling against a high-pT jet. More sophisticated jet calibration schemes are presented based on calorimeter cell energy density weighting or hadronic properties of jets, aiming for an improved jet energy resolution and a reduced flavour dependence of the jet response. The systematic uncertainty of the jet energy determined from a combination of in situ techniques is consistent with the one derived from single hadron response measurements over a wide kinematic range. The nominal corrections and uncertainties are derived for isolated jets in an inclusive sample of high-pT jets. Special cases such as event topologies with close-by jets, or selections of samples with an enhanced content of jets originating from light quarks, heavy quarks or gluons are also discussed and the corresponding uncertainties are determined. © 2013 CERN for the benefit of the ATLAS collaboration

Measurement of the inclusive and dijet cross-sections of b-jets in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The inclusive and dijet production cross-sections have been measured for jets containing b-hadrons (b-jets) in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 7 TeV, using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements use data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34 pb^-1. The b-jets are identified using either a lifetime-based method, where secondary decay vertices of b-hadrons in jets are reconstructed using information from the tracking detectors, or a muon-based method where the presence of a muon is used to identify semileptonic decays of b-hadrons inside jets. The inclusive b-jet cross-section is measured as a function of transverse momentum in the range 20 < pT < 400 GeV and rapidity in the range |y| < 2.1. The bbbar-dijet cross-section is measured as a function of the dijet invariant mass in the range 110 < m_jj < 760 GeV, the azimuthal angle difference between the two jets and the angular variable chi in two dijet mass regions. The results are compared with next-to-leading-order QCD predictions. Good agreement is observed between the measured cross-sections and the predictions obtained using POWHEG + Pythia. MC@NLO + Herwig shows good agreement with the measured bbbar-dijet cross-section. However, it does not reproduce the measured inclusive cross-section well, particularly for central b-jets with large transverse momenta.Comment: 10 pages plus author list (21 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version published in European Physical Journal