This paper studies individuals’ preference for reducing advantageous inequality in the distribution of gains and losses. Combining the inequality aversion model of Fehr and Schmidt (Q J Econ 114(3):817–868, 1999) with loss aversion à la Kahneman and Tversky (Econom J Econom Soc:263–291, 1979), we predict the relative dislike for advantageous inequality is lower when outcomes are framed as losses than when outcomes are framed as gains. We test this prediction using data from two modified dictator game experiments. Consistent with the model, we find that the amount of payoff that subjects are willing to sacrifice to increase the net payoff of others and reduce advantageous inequality is smaller under a loss frame than under a gain frame. The results also show that women are more inequality averse than men in both gains and losses.

Declining labor force participation of older men throughout the 20th century and recent increases in participation have generated substantial interest in understanding the effect of public pensions on retirement. The National Bureau of Economic Research's International Social Security (ISS) Project, a long-term collaboration among researchers in a dozen developed countries, has explored this and related questions. The project employs a harmonized approach to conduct within-country analyses that are combined for meaningful cross-country comparisons. The key lesson is that the choices of policy makers affect the incentive to work at older ages and these incentives have important effects on retirement behavior.

It has been long suggested that public pension wealth may crowd out household savings. However, there remains controversy about the extent of this displacement effect. In this paper we use an original microsimulation model based on retrospective survey data collected through the third wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to estimate the displacement effect of public pension wealth on other wealth in Belgium. Combining this rich dataset with an accurate estimation of the individual pension entitlements allows us to circumvent some of the main measurement error problems faced by previous studies. We estimate that an extra euro of public pension wealth is associated with about 14–25 cent decline in households’ non-pension wealth.

We study retirement incentives with an augmented reduced form option value model à la Stock and Wise (1990). We propose methodological extensions to better reflect the respective incentives faced by singles and couples. Our results show that a more comprehensive modeling of couples’ incentives leads to very different patterns of retirement incentives – particularly for women. We apply the new indicators to data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and retirement in Europe in Belgium and find two key results. First, contrary to several previous studies, we obtain a positive signed income effects. Second, we find very different retirement incentives for men and women, with little flexibility in the retirement decision for men and substantially more flexibility for women as a function of financial incentive and household composition.

Time-resolved photoluminescence experiments at varying temperature are performed on a series of InxGa1−xN/GaN quantum well and quantum box samples of similar compositions (0.15 < x < 0.20). The results are analyzed by using envelope-function calculations of transition energies and oscillator strengths, accounting for internal electric fields. The respective influences of localization and electric fields on radiative and nonradiative lifetimes and on the Stokes shift are deduced. The results indicate that the spatial extension of localization centers is much smaller than the size of the quantum boxes (∼10 × 3 nm, typically). The room-temperature radiative efficiency of both quantum well and quantum box samples is enhanced by replacing the topmost GaN barrier by an AlGaN one.

AlGaN/GaN quantum well (QWs) were grown on (0001) sapphire substrates by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) using ammonia as nitrogen precursor. The Al composition in the barriers was varied between 8 and 27 % and the well thickness from 4 to 17 monolayers (MLs, 1ML = 2.59Å). X-ray diffraction (XRD) experiments are used to investigate the strain state of both the well and the barriers. The QW transition energy are measured by low temperature photoluminescence (PL). A large quantum confined Stark effect is observed leading to QW luminescence much lower than the emission line of the GaN buffer layer for well width above a certain critical thickness. The built-in electric field responsible for such a phenomenon is deduced from fit of the PL data. Its magnitude is of several hundred kV/cm and increases linearly with the Al composition.

We analyze the low-temperature photoluminescence decay times, for a series of MBE-grown samples embedding GaN-AlGaN quantum wells. We investigate a variety of configurations in terms of well widths, barrier widths and overall strain states. We find that not only the wells but also the barriers are submitted to large built-in electric fields. In the case of narrow barriers (5 nm), these fields favor the nonradiative escape of carriers from narrow wells into wider wells. When all wells have the same width, the field in such narrow barriers allow us to observe the recombination of long-lived “inter-well” excitons at energies close to those of the short-lived “intra-well” excitons. Our results also prove that the energies and the dynamics of excitonic recombinations depend on the parameters of the heterostructures in a complicated way, due to the interplay of piezoelectric and spontaneous polarizations.

We analyze the low-temperature photoluminescence decay times, for a series of MBE-grown samples embedding GaN-AlGaN quantum wells. We investigate a variety of configurations in terms of well widths, barrier widths and overall strain states. We find that not only the wells but also the barriers are submitted to large built-in electric fields. In the case of narrow barriers (5 um), these fields favor the nonradiative escape of carriers from narrow wells into wider wells. When all wells have the same width, the field in such narrow barriers allow us to observe the recombination of long-lived “inter-well” excitons at energies close to those of the short-lived “intra-well” excitons. Our results also prove that the energies and the dynamics of excitonic recombinations depend on the parameters of the heterostructures in a complicated way, due to the interplay of piezoelectric and spontaneous polarizations.

AIGaN/GaN quantum well (QWs) were grown on (0001) sapphire substrates by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) using ammonia as nitrogen precursor. The Al composition in the barriers was varied between 8 and 27 % and the well thickness from 4 to 17 monolayers (MLs, 1ML = 2.59Å). X-ray diffraction (XRD) experiments are used to investigate the strain state of both the well and the barriers. The QW transition energy are measured by low temperature photoluminescence (PL). A large quantum confined Stark effect is observed leading to QW luminescence much lower than the emission line of the GaN buffer layer for well width above a certain critical thickness. The built-in electric field responsible for such a phenomenon is deduced from fit of the PL data. Its magnitude is of several hundred kV/cm and increases linearly with the Al composition.

The recombination dynamics of excitons in GaN / Ga0.93Al0.07N multiple quantum wells is studied versus lattice temperature. The average decay time of photoluminescence measured at 8K is of ∼330 ps, with a substantial variation of times within the emission line. This is interpreted in terms of carrier localization due to alloy disorder and to well width and depth variations. The radiative lifetime τr of excitons in the wells is found to increase linearly with temperature, with ∂τr / ∂T = 20.5 ± 0.7 ps.K−1. The radiative lifetime of free excitons in the low-temperature limit is deduced to be 2.4 ps, consistent with a longitudinal-transverse splitting ћωLT in GaN of 0.6 meV, in excellent agreement with recent estimations. The ratio of the lifetimes of localized and free excitons is found coherent with the picture of electrons and holes independently localized on short-range defects, instead of excitons localized as a whole on long-range potential fluctuations.