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2006

Economics

Wellesley College

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Labor Market Shocks And Retirement: Do Government Programs Matter?, Courtney C. Coile, Phillip B. Levine Oct 2006

Labor Market Shocks And Retirement: Do Government Programs Matter?, Courtney C. Coile, Phillip B. Levine

Economics Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines how unemployment affects retirement and whether the Unemployment Insurance (UI) system and Social Security (SS) system affect how older workers respond to labor market shocks. To do so, we use pooled cross-sectional data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS) as well as March CPS files matched between one year and the next and longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS). We find that downturns in the labor market increase retirement transitions. The magnitude of this effect is comparable to that associated with moderate changes in financial incentives to retire and to the threat of …


Assessing The Impact Of Job Loss On Workers And Firms, Kristin F. Butcher, Kevin F. Hallock Apr 2006

Assessing The Impact Of Job Loss On Workers And Firms, Kristin F. Butcher, Kevin F. Hallock

Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Bulls, Bears, And Retirement Behavior, Courtney C. Coile, Phillip B. Levine Apr 2006

Bulls, Bears, And Retirement Behavior, Courtney C. Coile, Phillip B. Levine

Economics Faculty Scholarship

The authors examine the relationship between stock market performance and retirement behavior. They first present a descriptive analysis of the wealth holdings of older households and simulate the labor supply response among stockholders necessary to generate observed retirement patterns. Few house holds, they find, have substantial stock holdings, and these holdings would have to be extremely responsive to market fluctuations to explain observed labor force patterns. The authors then exploit stock market fluctuations since the early 1980s (particularly the boom and bust between 1995 and 2002), along with variation in stock exposure, to generate a double quasi-experiment, comparing the retirement …