Time inconsistency and delayed retirement decision: the French pension bonus

With the increase in life expectancy and demographic shocks, several public policies in the last decades aim to encourage individuals to postpone retirement. One of them, the pension bonus, gives an increased pension if individuals retire beyond their Full Retirement Age. Previous ex post analyses found that the responsiveness to this type of financial incentives, which encourage to postpone retirement, is heterogeneous among agents and that the global effect is rather limited. Deriving from previous research in Behavioural Economics, this article analyses the impact of time inconsistency in the decision to delay retirement to get the bonus. Using public national survey data, short-term and long-term impatience are measured with questions on retiring motivations. After controlling for the endogeneity of the bonus knowledge, econometric results show that time-inconsistent agents are less likely to retire with the bonus.