Retirement Behavior in the U.S. and Europe

In this paper, we develop a retirement model featuring various endogenous exit routes: unemployment, disability, private and public pensions. The model allows for
saving and uncertainty along several dimensions including health and mortality. The preference parameters are estimated on longitudinal data from the U.S. and Europe. We analyze the roles played by preferences and institutions in explaining international heterogeneity in retirement behavior. Our preliminary estimates suggest that a model with a single set of preferences for individuals from the U.S., the Netherlands and Spain does not fit the data well. If Europeans were to have  the same preferences as Americans, they would save less than they actually do. Furthermore, the Dutch and Spanish would work more hours than observed in the data.