IER News & blogs

Bernard Casey is Chairing a session at a joint European Commission - World Bank Conference on Reforming Pension Systems in Europe and Central Asia, taking place in Brussels on 25-26 June 2012.

The conference aims to promote an open discussion about the challenges facing pension systems and the potential social, fiscal, financial, and macroeconomic implications of various reform measures to face the demographic challenges. It seeks to initiate and facilitate dialogue among governments and other interested parties on these important issues.

Bernard will chair the session on "Achievements of Pension Reform in the Last 20 Years".

Bernard Casey made presentations at two recent events on issues relating to the employment of older people.

The first, entitled “The Employment of Older People in a Period of Stagnation and Deregulation” was prepared together with Atsuhiro Yamada from the Department of Economics at Keio University, and delivered at the latest ESRC Rethinking Retirement Seminar Series (University of Kent, 4 May). The presentation focused on older people’s employment in Japan over the past twenty years, looking at changing economic circumstances since the end of the bubble economy and the coming to retirement age of the post war baby-boomers. A copy of the presentation can be downloaded from here.

The second was a presentation on “Working Beyond Retirement: explaining a UK phenomenon” at the 7^th European Conference of the European Social Insurance Platform (Brussels, 23 May). Under the title "Active and Healthy Ageing and Solidarity between Generations - the role of social insurances", the event aimed to clarify the role of the social insurance in addressing the challenges and opportunities of societal ageing. Copies of the slides can be downloaded from here.

In the fifth of a series of podcasts about our work at the Institute for Employment Research, Professor Jenny Bimrose tells us about some of the findings of her international study of older workers, in particular she focuses on the career development of older women and the role of careers guidance.

IER welcomes two visitors from the Czech Republic this week (17/18 May). Ludvik Michalicka and Oleksandr Stupnytskyy from RILSA (Research Institute for Labour and Social Affairs) will visit the IER to discuss local economic modelling and forecasting. Rob Wilson will be providing information about the IER’s LEFM approach. Further details of the project can be found at:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ier/research/rlmforecastingmodel/

We’d like to extend a warm invitation to the final ESRC seminar in the series on careers, which will be hosted by the Nottingham Trent University, on Wednesday, 20th June, 2012. The provisional title of the seminar is: ‘Learning from others’. Presenters will include:

• Dr Mary McMahon, University of Queensland, Australia and Professor Mark Watson, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa – ‘Crafting Identities: Learning, Curiosity and Career Guidance’
• Professor Vic Lally, University of Glasgow – ‘Inter-Life Project (Where Second Life Meets Real Life)’
• Yasmina Mallam-Hassam, Global Career Company – ‘Improving international student employability’

For more information go to the IER project webpage. If you are interested in attending, please contact sally-anne.barnes@warwick.ac.uk.