"On average young people ""undersave"" whereas old people ""oversave"" with respect to the rational expectations model of life-cycle consumption and savings. According to numerous studies on subjective survival beliefs, ...

We designed and fielded an experimental module in the 2014 HRS which seeks to measure older persons’ willingness to voluntarily defer claiming of Social Security benefits. In addition we evaluate the stated willingness of ...

This paper studies a consumption-portfolio problem where money enters the agent's utility function. We solve the corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation and provide closed-form solutions for the optimal consumption ...

This Chapter explores how an environment of persistent low returns influences saving, investing, and retirement behaviors, as compared to what in the past had been thought of as more “normal” financial conditions. Our ...

A number of recent studies have concluded that consumer spending patterns over the month are closely linked to the timing of income receipt. This correlation is interpreted as evidence of hyperbolic discounting. I re-examine ...

Self-control failure is among the major pathologies (Baumeister et al. (1994)) affecting individual investment decisions which has hardly been measurable in empirical research. We use cigarette addiction identified from ...

Job security is important for durable consumption and household savings. Using surveys, workers express a probability that they will lose their job in the next 12 months. In order to assess the empirical content of these ...

In the wake of the financial crisis and continued volatility in international capital markets, there is growing interest in mechanisms that can protect people against retirement account volatility. This paper explores the ...

We study whether and how time preferences change over the life cycle, exploiting representative long-term panel data. We estimate the age patterns of discount rates from age 25 to 80. In order to identify age effects, we ...

This paper studies a household’s optimal demand for a reverse mortgage. These contracts allow homeowners to tap their home equity to finance consumption needs. In stylized frameworks, we show that the decision to enter a ...