Retirement Behaviour in OECD Countries : Impact of Old Age Pension Schemes and other Social Transfer Programmes This paper examines the impact of old age pension systems and other social transfer programmes on the retirement decision of older males in OECD countries. For each of the 55 59 60 64 and 65+ age groups a new panel dataset of retirement incentives embedded in those schemes is constructed focusing mainly on the implicit tax rate on continued work. These currently differ widely across OECD countries: they are high in most Continental European Countries compared with Japan Korea English speaking and Nordic countries. Simple cross country correlations and panel data econometric estimates both show that implicit taxes on continued work have sizeable effects on the departure of older male workers from the labour force ...