Too Old to Work, Too Young to Retire? Revised Version of Working Paper 220, Economics Series, October 2007

Andrea Ichino, Guido Schwerdt, Rudolf Winter-Ebmer and Josef Zweimüller ()

No 302, Economics Series from Institute for Advanced Studies

Abstract: We study whether employment prospects of old and young workers differ after a plant closure. Using Austrian administrative data, we show that old and young workers face similar displacement costs in terms of employment in the long-run, but old workers lose considerably more initially and gain later. We interpret these findings using a search model with retirement as an absorbing state, that we calibrate to match the observed patterns. Our finding is that the dynamics of relative employment losses of old versus young workers after a displacement are mainly explained by different opportunities of transition into retirement. In contrast, differences in layoff rates and job offer arrival rates cannot explain these patterns. Our results support the idea that retirement incentives, more than weak labor demand, are responsible for the low employment rates of older workers.

Keywords: Aging; employability; plant closures; matching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J14 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2013-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-lab
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https://irihs.ihs.ac.at/id/eprint/2240 First version, 2013 (application/pdf)

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