Collaborative Research: Retirement Decisions After Job Loss

本项目研究了职业生涯后期失业对收入、财富和就业的影响，然后利用这些由失业引起的工作和退休相对回报的变化来揭示退休决策的本质。虽然以前的工作失业的结果往往忽略了老年工人和新兴的文学退休同样忽略了非自愿的工作离职，这个项目将面临一些重要的，但尚未回答的问题，在这两个文献的失业工人和退休决策。该项目分两个阶段进行，第一阶段涉及对失业对老年工人收入、就业和财富（包括养老金财富）影响的简化调查。在第二阶段中，将失业的估计影响纳入退休决策的结构模型中。在第一阶段中，使用健康与退休调查（HRS）的数据，估计失业对50岁及以上劳动者的收入、财务财富、养老金、就业和退休预期的影响。虽然有大量文献论述了流离失所的影响，但最近的许多研究仅集中在“黄金年龄”工人身上。此外，几乎没有关于流离失所对财富（包括养老金财富）或工人对未来就业和退休的期望的影响的研究。鉴于近年来老年工人失业率急剧上升，这些遗漏尤其令人不安。初步结果显示，职业生涯后期失业对工资、金融资产和未来就业造成了重大损害。该项目的第二阶段以这些简化形式的研究为基础，使用动态退休模型的框架，考察了由失业引起的收入和财富变化对实际和预期退休的影响。大多数退休模型的实证实施不允许资产或储蓄在退休决策中的明确作用，也不允许流动性约束，这些特征对失业者特别重要，因为初步研究结果表明，失业会严重损害财富，这会严重影响随后的就业和失业过渡。在这个项目中，著名的“期权价值”退休模型被修改，以考虑储蓄、资产和流动性约束，并使用HRS关于实际和预期就业的数据对模型进行估计。除了失业本身的基本利益之外，失业所产生的未来工作回报和退休的巨大个人差异为研究更普遍的退休问题提供了独特的机会。除了通常的横截面数据观察退休，退休预期的纵向数据允许估计固定效应版本的期权价值模型。由于这些模型以前的应用程序已经隐含地使用个人之间的差异，在未来的工作回报和退休，这个项目，在确定这种内部的人的变异来源，提供了一个重要的贡献，退休决策的实证文献。

AbstractSBR-9907824This project investigates the effects of late career job loss on earnings, wealth and employment, then uses these displacement-induced changes in the relative returns to work and retirement to cast new light on the nature of the retirement decision. While previous work on job loss outcomes has often ignored older workers and the burgeoning literature on retirement has similarly ignored involuntary job separations, this project will confront a number of important yet unanswered questions in both the literatures on displaced workers and on retirement decision-making. Proceeding in two stages, the first stage ofthe project involves reduced-form investigations ofthe effects of job loss on older workers' earnings, employment, and wealth, including pension wealth. In the second stage, the estimated effects of job loss are incorporated into a structural model of the retirement decision.In the first stage, data from the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) are used to estimate the effects of job loss on earnings, financial wealth, pensions, employment and retirement expectations of workers aged 50 and over. While there is a large literature on the effects of displacement, much of the recent research has focused solely on "prime-age" workers. In addition, virtually no research exists on the effects of displacement on wealth, including pension wealth, or on workers' expectations regarding future employment and retirement. These omissions are particularly troubling given the dramatic increase in the incidence of job loss among older workers in recent years. Preliminary results show substantial damage to wages, financial assets, and future employment as a result of late career job loss.The second stage of the project builds on these reduced-form studies, and examines the effects of displacement-induced changes in earnings and wealth on actual and expected retirement, using the framework of a dynamic retirement model. Most empirical implementations of retirement models do not allow an explicit role for assets or saving in the retirement decision, nor for liquidity constraints, features that are particularly important for job-losers given preliminary findings that wealth is significantly damaged by job loss and that this substantially affects subsequent transitions into and out of employment. In this project, the well-known "option value" retirement model is modified to allow for saving, assets and liquidity constraints, and the model is estimated using HRS data on actual and expected employment.Beyond the fundamental interest in job loss itself, the substantial within-person variation in the future returns to work and retirement generated by the job loss provides a unique opportunity to examine more general issues of retirement. In addition to the usual cross-sectional data on observed retirement, the longitudinal data on retirement expectations allows for the estimation of fixed-effects versions of the option value model. Because previous applications of these models have implicitly used differences across individuals in future returns to work and retirement, this project, in identifying this within-person source of variation, offers an important contribution to the empirical literature on retirement decisions.