This paper investigates the relationship between time preferences and lifetime social and economic behavior. We use a Swedish longitudinal dataset that links information from a large survey on childrens time preferences at age 13 to administrative registers spanning over four decades. Our...

The excessive use of credit cards and increasing consumer borrowing has been a major problem. Laibson (1997) suggests the present-bias problem as one of the driving forces of excessive borrowing. Shefrin and Thaler (1988) suggest that self-control underlies national borrowing/savings rate. We...

This paper investigates the relationship between time preferences and lifetime social and economic behavior. We use a Swedish longitudinal dataset that links information from a large survey on childrens time preferences at age 13 to administrative registers spanning over four decades. Our...

Some empirical studies firmly reveal that people tend to form overly pessimistic survival expectations for relatively less distant ages and overly optimistic survival expectations for relatively more distant ages. We incorporate this observation into a life-cycle continuous time...

Recent research has shown that the "spirit of capitalism"¡ªa preference for wealth itself, in addition to consumption¡ªhas important implications for growth and asset pricing. This paper explores how the spirit of capitalism affects saving and consumption behavior. We demonstrate that the...

This paper analyzes return migration and asset accumulation in a stochastic dynamic model using a longitudinal dataset on legal immigrants in Germany. Our model gives a number of implications about the level, timing and selection of return migration along with the savings proÞles of immigrants....