IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bon/boncrc/crctr224_2020_226.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reference Points for Retirement Behavior: Evidence From German Pension Discontinuities

Author

Listed:
  • Arthur Seibold

Abstract

This paper studies the large concentration of retirement behavior around statutory retirement ages, a puzzling stylized fact. To investigate this fact, I estimate bunching responses to 644 pension benefit discontinuities, using administrative data on the universe of German retirees. Financial incentives alone cannot explain retirement patterns, but there is a large direct effect of statutory retirement ages. I argue that the framing of statutory ages as reference points for retirement provides a plausible explanation. Simulations based on a model with reference dependence highlight that shifting statutory ages via pension reforms is an effective policy to influence retirement behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Arthur Seibold, 2020. "Reference Points for Retirement Behavior: Evidence From German Pension Discontinuities," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2020_226, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2020_226
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.crctr224.de/research/discussion-papers/archive/dp226
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Riphahn, Regina T. & Schrader, Rebecca, 2023. "Reforms of an early retirement pathway in Germany and their labor market effects," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(3), pages 304-330, July.
    2. Becker, Sebastian & Buslei, Hermann & Geyer, Johannes & Haan, Peter, 2022. "The Effect of Pension Wealth on Employment," IZA Discussion Papers 15836, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Clifford, Sarah & Mavrokonstantis, Panos, 2021. "Tax enforcement using a hybrid between self- and third-party reporting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    4. Sebastian Becker & Hermann Buslei & Johannes Geyer & Peter Haan, 2021. "Employment Responses to Income Effect: Evidence from Pension Reform," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1941, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Pensions; retirement; reference dependence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2020_226. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CRC Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.crctr224.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.