Hello, just a reminder that the seminar is tomorrow, please see below:
“Disability Benefit Generosity and Labor Force Withdrawal”
joint with
S. Staubli
Speaker:
Kathleen Mullen
RAND Corporation
Seminar sponsored by:
The Department of Economics
University of Manitoba
RDC Manitoba
Friday, November 13th , 2015
2:30 – 4:00 PM
307 Tier Building
University of Manitoba
For more information call: 204-474-9207
All are welcome to attend.
Here is the abstract for the paper:
Disability Benefit Generosity and Labor Force Withdrawal
Kathleen J. Mullen, RAND
Stefan Staubli, University of Calgary
A key component for estimating the optimal size and structure of disability insurance programs
is the elasticity of labor force participation with respect to benefit generosity. Yet, in many
countries including the United States all workers face identical benefit schedules, which are a
function of one’s labor market history, making it difficult to separate the effect of the benefit
level from the effect of preferences for work on individuals’ withdrawal from the labor force. To
circumvent this problem, we exploit exogenous variation in disability insurance benefits in
Austria arising from several reforms to its disability insurance and old age pension system in the
1990s and 2000s. We use comprehensive administrative social security records data on the
universe of Austrian workers to compute benefit levels under six different regimes, allowing us
to identify and precisely estimate the elasticity of labor force withdrawal (disability insurance
claiming) with respect to benefit generosity.
Thank you,
Gwen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gwendolyn Band
Office Assistant
Department of Economics
Room 501 Fletcher Argue Building
University of Manitoba R3T 5V5
Ph: (204) 474-6239