Senior activity rate, retirement incentives and labor relations

Abstract

How is it that populations react so differently to policy incentives among developed countries? We noticed that senior employment rates not only differ in level strikingly from one country to another, they also differ in their reaction to retirement incentives set by governments. We show the importance of trust given to the employer in wage negotiations by a simple trade-off model. According to this model, reaction of the senior activity rate to policy changes depends on the properties of the distribution of trust to employers at the country level. We then identify these properties by an empirical study based on panel data for nineteen OECD countries from 1980 to 2004. We show that the elasticity of senior males labor force participation rate to retirement incentives is stronger in countries with better and more homogeneously distributed working conditions. This results also applies to countries with higher generalized trust.early retirement incentives ; labor relations ; seniors activity rate ; trust