As argued by Summers et al. (Quarterly Journal of Economics 1993; 108: 385-411) and Cigno ('Is There a Social Security Tax Wedge?', CESifo Working Paper No. 1772, 2006) public old-age pension benefits may work as a wage-moderating device, thereby lessening the distorting effects of labour taxation on unemployment. An implication of this argument is that there should be a negative relationship between the generosity of the pension system and the unemployment rate, for those countries where there is a strong link between individual contributions to the pension system and benefits, i.e. countries with Bismarckian pension systems. We test this hypothesis using a panel of 20 OECD countries for the time period of 1960-2004. The paper also provides evidence on the unemployment effects of various labour market institutions. Copyright 2007 The Author. Journal compilation CEIS, Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2007.
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Article provided by CEIS, Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini and Blackwell Publishing Ltd in its journal LABOUR.
Volume (Year): 21 (2007) Issue (Month): 4-5 (December) Pages: 595-610 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML,
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