We ask whether a pay-as-you-go financed social security system is welfare improving in an economy with idiosyncratic productivity and aggregate business cycle risk. We show analytically that the whole welfare benefit from ...

When markets are incomplete, social security can partially insure against idiosyncratic and aggregate risks. We incorporate both risks into an analytically tractable model with two overlapping generations. We derive the ...

This paper investigates whether exchanging the Social Security delayed retirement credit, currently paid as an increase in lifetime annuity benefits, for a lump sum would induce later claiming and additional work. We show ...

People who delay claiming Social Security receive higher lifelong benefits upon retirement. We survey individuals on their willingness to delay claiming later, if they could receive a lump sum in lieu of a higher annuity ...

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is the longest running longitudinal household survey in the world. The study began in 1968 with a nationally representative sample of over 18,000 individuals living in 5,000 families ...

Robert J. Shiller's online data

"Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union situated in Luxembourg. Its mission is to provide high quality statistics for Europe. While fulfilling its mission, Eurostat promotes the following values: respect ...

BEA's national economic accounts provide a comprehensive picture of the U.S. economy and feature many macroeconomic statistics.

The ALP is a nationally representative, probability-based panel of over 6000 members ages 18 and older who are regularly interviewed over the internet for research purposes. All data are available for free to researchers. ...

The Human Mortality Database (HMD) contains original calculations of death rates and life tables for national populations (countries or areas), as well as the input data used in constructing those tables. The input data ...