Hilke Brockmann

Time to retire--time to die? A prospective cohort study of the effects of early retirement on long-term survival.

In a long-term prospective cohort study we try to assess selective and protective impacts of early retirement on life expectancy. The results are based on the members of a compulsory German health insurance fund (Gmünder Ersatzkasse). We analyzed 88,399 men and 41,276 women who retired between the ages of 50 and 65 from January 1990 to December 2004. Our main outcome measures are hazard ratios for death adjusted for age, sex, marital and socioeconomic status, year of observation, age at retirement, hospitalization, and form of retirement scheme. We found a significantly higher mortality risk among pensioners with reduced earning capacities than among old-age pensioners who either left the labor market between the ages of 56 and 60 or between 61 and 65. The youngest male and female pensioners who left the labor market between the ages of 51 and 55 because of their reduced earning capacity faced the highest mortality risk. But healthy people who retire early do not experience shorter long-term survival than those who retire late. On the contrary, if we take into consideration the amount of days spent in hospital during the last 2 years prior to retirement, early retirement in fact lowers mortality risks significantly by 12% for men and by 23% for women. Thus with respect to mortality, early retirement reflects both selective and protective processes. First of all, individuals with poor health and lower survival chances are filtered out of the labor market. However, healthy pensioners may be protected during retirement. For the former, early retirement is a necessity, for the latter it is an asset. Pension reformers should take health differentials into consideration when cutting back pension programs and increasing retirement age.

Happy taxation: increasing tax compliance through positive rewards?

Can governments increase tax compliance by rewarding honest taxpayers? We conducted a controlled laboratory experiment comparing tax compliance under a “deterrence†baseline with tax compliance under two “reward†treatments: a “donation†treatment giving taxpayers a say in the spending purposes of their payments and a “lucky†treatment giving taxpayers the (highly unlikely) chance of winning a lottery. The reward treatments significantly affected tax behaviour but not in a straightforward manner. Although female participants altered their behaviour as expected and complied somewhat more, men strongly reacted in the opposite manner: they evaded a much higher percentage of taxes than under the baseline. Apparently, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to boost tax compliance.

Happiness and Maximization: An Introduction

If you ask a chef, a physician, or a teacher the question: “Is more always better,” they will probably answer: “No”. Of course, it depends on the dish you are cooking, the illness you are curing, and the subject you are teaching. But these professionals know when additional ingredients spoil the dish, additional treatment harms the patient, and additional learning material frustrates the student. If you put the same question to an economist or a consumer, though, it is less clear what the answer will be.

My Car is Bigger than Yours: Consumption, Status Competition, and Happiness in Times of Affluence

Does consumption make people happy? The standard answer from economics is: Yes! By assumption, consumers consume because that increases their utility. However, empirical studies of US consumer behavior reveal striking trends in conspicuous and harmful consumption. New findings in happiness research explain when consumption makes people unhappy and why unhappy consumers cannot easily stop their malconsumption. Researchers also identify escape routes both at the individual and the societal level. The chapter concludes with a discussion of institutional implications.