Retirement Age

More directly illustrative of law and economics reasoning is Laspeyres' booklet on the question of professorial retirement age (1876), an excellent example of his statistical and analytical skills. Laspeyres analyses the effects of different retirement schemes according to which effect (on students and professors alike) they are supposed to have and which they actually do have, focusing on the question of how to retain good teachers and scholars, even when they are older, while being able to dismiss those who have become unproductive or, worse, outright senile. Although circumstances and possibilities have changed, his answers can still be read with much profit today, or perhaps especially today.