We use a life cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice to study the effects of social security on the investment decisions of households for the European case. Our model is mainly based on the one developed by Cocco, Gomes, and Maenhout (2005). We extend it by unemployment risk using...

The well-documented positive correlation between income risk and wealth was interpreted as evidence for high amounts of precautionary wealth in various studies. However, the large estimates emerged from pooling non-entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs without controlling for heterogeneity. This paper...

Business cycle models often abstract from persistent household heterogeneity, despite its potentially significant implications for macroeconomic fluctuations and policy. We show empirically that the likelihood of being persistently financially constrained decreases with cognitive skills and...

This paper empirically investigates the effects of changes in the interest rate as well as transitory income uncertainty on households' consumption-savings decision. Applying a structural demand model to German survey data, we estimate the uncompensated interest rate elasticity for savings, in...

After the collapse in the early years of transition, saving rates in many EU-accession countries have recovered and remained stable during recent years. This may indicate that the transformation process has come to an end with regard to savings. Is saving behaviour in EU-accession countries now...

Private savings mirror consumption behavior. In Europe, the dynamic of consumption is very low, and at the same time, savings are increasing. Is this a result of macroeconomic policy? A GMM estimator is used to analyze the determinants of private saving in the EU?s 15 member states. Our main...

The purpose of this contribution is to illustrate the mechanism by which higher oil prices might lead to lower interest rates in the context of a simple model that takes into account the global external savings equilibrium. The simple model has interesting implications for how one views the huge...

The global imbalances of the 2000s and the recent global financial crisis are intimately connected. Both originate in the combination of economic policies adopted by the two key economies, the US and China. Global financial markets served as a transmission belt, both during the boom as during...

A two-sector incomplete markets model with heterogeneous agents can be used to study the distributional effects of the COVID-19 lockdown. While negative aggregate welfare effects of the lockdown are unavoidable, the size of aggregate welfare effects as well as the distribution of the welfare...

We develop a New Keynesian model with household heterogeneity and bounded rationality in the form of cognitive discounting. The interaction of household heterogeneity and bounded rationality generates amplification of monetary and fiscal policy through indirect general equilibrium effects while...