Market access and individual wages: evidence from China

We consider the effect of geography on wages using individual data from 56 Chinese cities. We present a simple new economic geography model that links wages to individual characteristics and market access. The latter is calculated as a transport cost weighted sum of surrounding locations' market capacity. After controlling for individual skills and local factor endowments, we find that a significant fraction of the interindividual differences in returns to labor can be explained by the geography of market access. We further find greater wage sensitivity to market access for highly skilled workers and for workers in private and, particularly, foreign-owned firms.

Private Pensions and Income Security in Old Age: An Uncertain Future -- Conference Report

By all measures the private pension system in Canada is in difficulty. One estimate suggests that at the end of 2005 there were significant funding shortfalls in about three quarters of the traditional defined benefit pension plans that fall under federal jurisdiction in Canada. In order to discuss how vulnerable the current system is, to identify possible directions of reform, and to consider how to implement them, the conference on “Private Pensions and Income Security in Old Age: An Uncertain Future” brought together researchers, those who design and manage pension plans, and those responsible for pension policy, both from Canada and abroad. It was organized by the SEDAP Research Program and held in Hamilton, Ontario, in November 2006. This paper summarizes the presentations that were given in 10 conference sessions, covering issues such as pension regulations, poverty and income security in old age, policy options, reform obstacles, and international perspectives. Many of the conference presentations, including tables and graphs, are available on SEDAP’s websiteprivate pensions, public pensions, income security in old age, poverty in old age, defined-benefit pension plans, pension plan funding, pension plan coverage

The Integration of Occupational Pension Regulations: Lessons for Canada

Is the integration of occupational pension regulations across the Canadian provinces feasible? In this paper, we assess the proposal for harmonization made by the Canadian Association of Pension Supervisory Authorities (CAPSA) by comparing it to the EU’s successful integration of member states’ pension regulations. We argue that CAPSA’s initiative failed both because regulatory diversity was defined as a fundamental problem and because the regulations that serve social policy goals were not protected from integration. We suggest that occupational pension integration in Canada would be feasible if provincial governments largely excluded rules on benefits and relied primarily on the mutual recognition of regulations.occupational pensions, regulation, agenda-setting, problem definition, Canada, European Union

Grand Coalitions for Unpopular Reforms: Building a Cross-Party Consensus to Raise the Retirement Age

This article argues that an increase of the retirement age from 65 years to 67 or higher, which is the most unpopular pension reform measure, is politically feasible if the major parties build either a formal or an informal grand coalition. It argues further that institutional rules and agreed standards, especially the goals expressed in relation to pension policy, facilitate the formation of a grand coalition and increase the autonomy of governments vis-à-vis trade unions. Specifically, by restricting key policy instruments for responding to fiscal pressures, they lead political parties to consider the controversial option of raising the retirement age and to engage in a coordinative discourse about the necessity of this change and the limits of other reform options. This argument implies that the success of a retirement age reform does not depend on a negotiated agreement between a government and trade unions. By examining the agenda-setting and decisionmaking processes in Germany from the mid-1990s to 2007, this article shows that governments raise the retirement age only if they face constraints that rule out tax increases and benefit cuts and that they are able to enact even comprehensive retirement age reforms that increase not only the normal age but also the earliest eligibility age for both public and private pensions.welfare state, pension politics, retirement age, policy paradigms, institutional constraints, blame avoidance

The Influence of Emotional Material on Encoding and Retrieving Intentions: An ERP Study in Younger and Older Adults

Prospective memory is a cognitive process that comprises the encoding and maintenance of an intention until the appropriate moment of its retrieval. It is of highly relevance for an independent everyday life, especially in older adults; however, there is ample evidence that prospective memory declines with increasing age. Because most studies have used neutral stimuli, it is still an open question how emotional factors influence age-related differences in prospective remembering. The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of emotional material on prospective memory encoding, monitoring, maintaining, and retrieval in younger and older adults using behavioral and electrophysiological measures. We tested 24 younger adults (M = 26.4 years) and 20 older adults (M = 68.1 years) using a picture one-back task as ongoing activity with an embedded prospective memory instruction. The experimental task consisted of three sessions. In each session, participants had to encode series of images that represented the prospective memory cues for the consecutive block. The images were either of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral valence. The pictures used in the ongoing task were likewise of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral valence. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to assess the neural correlates of intention encoding, maintenance, and self-initiated retrieval. We did not find age differences between younger and older adults on the behavioral level. However, the ERP results revealed an interesting pattern that suggested for both age groups elevated attentional processing of emotional cues during encoding indicated by an elevated LPP for the emotional cues. Additionally, younger adults showed increased activity for unpleasant cues. During the maintenance phase, both age groups engaged in strategic monitoring especially for pleasant cues, which led to enhanced sustained positivity. During retrieval, older adults showed increased activity of ERP components related to cue detection and retrieval mainly for pleasant cues indicating enhanced relevance for those cues. In conclusion, emotional material may influence prospective remembering in older adults differently than in younger adults by supporting a mixture of top-down and bottom-up controlled processing. The results demonstrated a negativity bias in younger adults and a positivity bias in older adults