retirement age ( age of eligibility ) contributes to designing labor market norms in that it works as a signal to both workers and employers, and affects the actual retirement age, thereby contributing to their preparations for continued employment. as we can see from labor force survey data, there has been a dramatic change in the labor market, which is reflected in a doubling of the rate of working women aged 60 – 64 from 25 percent in 2004 to 49 percent in 2013. increasing the retirement age requires complementary policy tools in the labor market in order to make the process of raising the retirement age for women successful, complementary policy tools must be used in the labor market, such as : • extending the period of unemployment benefits for older workers. • incentives for employing older women. • enforcing labor laws, particularly the prohibition against discrimination based on age. • allocating resources for professional training while focusing on more demanding professions. in summation, increasing the retirement age is expected to significantly increase the employment rate of older women, and the retirement age should be increased in order to ensure sufficient pension savings and income upon retirement. this should be accompanied by complementary measures such as encouraging the employment of older women, for example through programs such as “ experience required ”, which was launched by the ministry of seniors affairs this morning. there are obviously cases where older people have difficulty finding work, but the data show that the unemployment rate or those who despair of finding a job did not increase as a result of raising the retirement age. in view of all this, the more we promote raising the retirement age, it will be possible to do so more gradually, which will allow employers and workers to adjust and prepare for the change ahead of time, and to ensure proper employment until retirement and proper pensions for afterwards. bis central bankers ’ speeches

david klein : the changing exchange rate regime - background, policy and implications ; the case of israel speech by mr david klein, governor of the bank of israel, at the euro - mediterranean seminar, eurosystem and mediterranean country national central banks, organised by the bank of italy and the european central bank, naples, 14 - 15 january 2004. * * * the exchange rate regime is an important component of macro - economic policy. after experiencing a period of sluggish growth and rapid inflation in the ‘ 70s and the first half of the ‘ 80s of the last century, israel changed its economic strategy. in a series of agreements with the european union and the united states, all barriers to international trade were removed. unilaterally israel removed those barriers on trade with other countries as well, and cemented all these changes in a number of agreements in the framework of the wto and by accepting article 8 of the imf articles of agreement. furthermore, in the ‘ 90s and the first few years of this decade, israel gradually abolished all exchange controls. the concept behind this economic strategy was that a small economy like that of israel, can exhaust its growth potential only by being open to the world. as a result of this basic strategy, the central bank, which was its main promoter, had to overhaul its policy to maintain price and financial stability. the change entailed replacing the exchange rate by an inflation target as the nominal anchor. to do that a few steps had to be implemented simultaneously : first, to render the exchange rate regime more flexible. we realized that removing exchange controls would make it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain a fixed exchange rate. this meant moving from a fixed exchange rate regime through a horizontal exchange rate band, to an upward sloping diagonal band, to an ever - widening band and, finally, to a floating exchange rate regime. the gradual approach was required to give time to an inter - bank foreign currency market to develop, including the creation of financial instruments, traded and over the counter, to hedge against the exchange rate risk. second, in order to go along with the lifting of the foreign exchange controls, the central bank and the government had to implement an extensive deregulation of the domestic money and capital markets. this meant abolishing numerous directed credit facilities, and extensive commercialization of government debt in the framework of capital market reform. third, working with inflation and price stability targets required shaping of appropriate monetary policy instruments. in this context we scraped the