This paper studies the large concentration of retirement behavior around statutory retirement ages, a puzzling stylized fact. To investigate this fact, I estimate bunching responses to 644 pension benefit discontinuities, using administrative data on the universe of German retirees. Financial incentives alone cannot explain retirement patterns, but there is a large direct effect of statutory retirement ages. I argue that the framing of statutory ages as reference points for retirement provides a plausible explanation. Simulations based on a model with reference dependence highlight that shifting statutory ages via pension reforms is an effective policy to influence retirement behavior. (JEL D91, H55, J26, J32)

Public disability insurance (DI) programs in many countries face growing fiscal pressures, prompting efforts to reduce spending. In this paper, we investigate the welfare effects of expanding the role of private insurance markets in the face of public DI cuts. We exploit a reform that abolished one part of German public DI and use unique data from a large insurer. We document modest crowding‐out effects of the reform, such that private DI take‐up remains incomplete. We find no adverse selection in the private DI market. Instead, private DI tends to attract individuals with high income, high education, and low disability risk. Using a revealed preference approach, we estimate individual insurance valuations. Our welfare analysis finds that partial DI provision via the voluntary private market can improve welfare. However, distributional concerns may justify a full public DI mandate.

We study firm responses to a large‐scale change in apprenticeship regulation in Colombia. The reform requires firms to train, setting apprentice quotas that vary discontinuously in firm size. We document strong heterogeneity in responses across sectors, where firms in sectors with high skill requirements tend to avoid training apprentices, while firms in low‐skill sectors seek apprentices. Guided by these reduced‐form findings, we structurally estimate firms' training costs. Especially in high‐skill sectors, many firms face large training costs, limiting their willingness to train apprentices. Yet, we find substantial overall benefits of expanding apprenticeship training, in particular when the supply of trained workers increases in general equilibrium. Finally, we show that counterfactual policies taking into account heterogeneity across sectors can deliver similar benefits from training while inducing less distortions in the firm‐size distribution and in the allocation of resources across sectors.