Earnings and Pension Compensation: The Effect of Eligibility

Robert L. Clark and Ann A. McDermed

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1986, vol. 101, issue 2, 341-361

Abstract: Pension compensation is shown to rise with age and tenure until the worker becomes eligible to receive benefits. At this point, pension compensation drops sharply. If workers are paid their marginal product in each period, earnings grow at a lower rate prior to eligibility but must increase when the worker reaches the age of eligibility. This hypothesis is tested using data from the Retirement History Study, and earnings are found to rise significantly after eligibility. This finding supports the concept of spot market compensation and is in direct conflict with the predictions of Lazear-type lifetime contracts.

Date: 1986
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/1891119 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:101:y:1986:i:2:p:341-361.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().