Life-cycle theory suggests that workers would prefer to gradually enter retirement from their career jobs. Using data from 15 campuses of the University of North Carolina system, this study provides a first look at the effects of the introduction of a phased retirement program on faculty retirement decisions. Our analysis indicates that most of the faculty members choosing phased retirement would have likely remained full-time at their universities had the phased retirement option not been available.

Employers have been launching phased retirement programs to help workers navigate the transition from work to retirement more effectively. This paper examines the experience of the phased retirement system for tenured faculty in the University of North Carolina system. After phased retirement was introduced, there was a sizable increase in the overall separation rate in the system. A multinomial logit model of the retirement decision as a function of pension incentives, employee performance, demographics, and campus characteristics is developed. The key empirical result is that the odds of entering phased retirement are strongly and inversely related to employee performance, as measured by recent pay increases.

No abstract

This study examines the distributional impact of three types of lottery games operated by the South Carolina Education Lottery (SCEL). We fi nd signifi cant sales variation by game type across both age and race. We also fi nd each of the three types to be regressive, but with substantial differences in the degree of regressivity across games. By estimating the determinants of lottery sales using variables that capture the distribution of income rather than simply its level, our analysis provides a more complete description of the incidence of lottery sales. Our results suggest that lotteries may not be as regressive as suggested by the earlier literature.

No abstract