Identifying the effect of the financial incentives created by social security systems on the retirement behaviour of individuals requires exogenous variation in program parameters. In this paper we study the 1993 Australian Age Pension reform which increased the eligibility age for women to access the social security benefit. We find economically significant responses to the increase in the Age...

This paper uses matched employer-employee data to examine the wage responses a mandatory social insurance reform program in Ethiopia. By relying on firm-level differences alternative pre-reform contributory schemes, we extent which employers shifted cost of workers terms lower wages. We find partial switching that varies by workers’ employment history. Wages recent hires treatment firms show de...

FOREWORD Regulations are the sinews of modern government, the legal instruments that connect abstract government policies with the day-today activities of commerce and private life. In the highly-developed administrative states characteristic of OECD countries, government effectiveness has become to a significant degree dependent on the quality of the systems that develop, enforce, adjudicate, ...

Education, Health and Mortality: Evidence from a Social Experiment We study the effect of a compulsory education reform in Sweden on adult health and mortality. The reform was implemented by municipalities between 1949 and 1962 as a social experiment and implied an extension of compulsory schooling from 7 or 8 years depending on municipality to 9 years nationally. We use detailed individual dat...

The authors claim that the critical health reform in Chilean history was the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1952. The development of modern Chilean health care since the end of the 19th century is discussed both in terms of the prevailing health situation and the subsequent evolution of institutions and policies, with an emphasis on the social and political conditions tha...