Conference Agenda

We use population-wide data from Finland to provide evidence on the impact of earnings disregard policies on part-time work during unemployment spells. The share of part-time workers among benefit recipients increased sharply from about 10% to nearly 18% over a few years after the implementation of earnings disregards in unemployment benefits and housing allowances, which allowed individuals to earn up to 300 euros per month without reductions in their benefits. Using variation in the impact of the reforms on incentives between individuals eligible for different types of benefits, we estimate a 19-20% increase in participation in part-time work due to the implementation of earnings disregards. We find no evidence that earnings disregards crowd out full-time employment, but instead find moderate positive longer-run employment effects.

This study measures how mid-career Japanese workers value flexible work (time/location) and discretionary work (autonomy over tasks) and discusses implications for retirement and public pension policy. Using an online stated-preference experiment with full-time male employees aged 35–44 in Japan, respondents repeatedly chose between a standard job and alternative work plans under randomized earnings. Logit-based willingness-to-pay estimates show near-zero value for flexibility, but a strongly negative value for discretion: workers require an earnings premium of about 18–20% to accept discretionary jobs. Higher-income respondents value flexibility somewhat more and demand smaller premiums. Linking these preferences to stated plans, flexible-work preference predicts a slightly later desired retirement age but is unrelated to preferred pension claiming age. The findings suggest that work-style reforms alone may not materially delay pension take-up, so labor and pension policies should be designed jointly to extend contribution careers.

We analyze the causal effects of survivor benefits on women’s labor and capital market decisions. We exploit a cohort-based reform in Sweden in 1990 that sharply reduced survivor benefits. To estimate how women compensate for a loss of public insurance, we apply regression discontinuity and differences-in-differences designs to estimate the reform-effects on labor supply, earnings, and wealth accumulation. We find no evidence of forward-looking labor supply adjustments in anticipation of lower survivor benefits while partners are still alive. However, affected women postpone retirement and accumulate significantly more net wealth. Yet, these adjustments are insufficient to fully offset the benefit loss. After an early and unexpected partner death, women substantially increase employment and earnings, which is consistent with imperfect foresight.

Many countries extend unemployment insurance (UI) entitlements for older workers. While such extensions increase separations and prolong unemployment among eligible individuals, little is known about their effects on coworkers within firms. I study whether extended UI reshapes the allocation of separations across age groups using cohort-based reforms to the Finnish UI extension program. Exploiting reform-induced variation in eligibility across firms with different age structures, I show that a higher share of eligible coworkers reduces layoffs among younger employees, particularly during demand shocks. Quantitatively, the reduction in layoffs among younger workers nearly offsets the increase among eligible older workers. Extended UI also reshapes the allocation of furloughs and job-to-job transitions across age groups within firms. These results highlight the importance of within-firm spillovers for understanding the incidence of social insurance policies.