Correspondence: Antoine Bozio, The Institute for Fiscal Studies, 7 Ridgmount Street, London WC1E 7AE, UK. Tel: +44 20 7291 4800; Fax: +44 20 7323 4780

¹studied economics in Paris at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) and then obtained his PhD from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Scicences Sociales (EHESS). His PhD thesis research focused on pension reforms in France. He is currently Research Economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in London and Teaching Fellow at University College London (UCL). His research interests include taxation, labour supply and evaluation methods.

This paper has been adapted from the following book chapter: 'How Elastic is the Response of the Retirement-Age Labor Supply? Evidence from the 1993 French Pension Reform', by Antoine Bozio. Published in 'Pension Strategies in Europe and the United States', edited by Robert Fenge, Georges de Ménil and Pierre Pestieau. ISBN-10: 0-262-06272-0. Published by the MIT Press. A review of this book will be published in the next issue of the Journal.

Received 8 September 2008; Revised 8 September 2008.

Abstract

This paper offers the first ex post evaluation of the incentive effects of the 1993 French pension reform. We use administrative data in order to assess how individuals have reacted to changes in incentives to delay retirement. We take advantage of the fact that different groups were affected differently by the reform in order to identify precisely the behavioural impact of changing incentives. We find that one additional quarter of necessary contribution led to an average increase of 1.5 months in retirement age, corresponding to a coefficient response of 0.54. Moreover, we show that the reform has also encouraged individuals to claim more disability pensions and to find additional quarters of past contribution.