This paper incorporates two empirically-grounded insights into a dynamic life cycle portfolio choice model: the fact that investors forego the opportunity to accumulate job-specific skills when they spend time managing their own money, and the observation that efficiency in financial decision...

This chapter is concerned with the distribution of personal wealth, which usually refers to the material assets that can be sold in the marketpace, although on occasion pension rights are also included. We summarise the available evidence on wealth distribution for a number of countries. This...

Revealed preference theory offers a criterion for decision-making quality: if decisions are high quality then there exists a utility function the choices maximize. We conduct a large-scale experiment to test for consistency with utility maximization. Consistency scores vary markedly within and...

We measure heterogeneity in risk aversion among households in Thai villages using a full risk-sharing model and complement the results with a measure based on optimal portfolio choice. Among households with relatives living in the same village, full insurance cannot be rejected, suggesting that...

This paper suggests a method for estimating the distribution of discount rates using panel data on income and wealth. Using the English Longitudinal Survey of Ageing (ELSA), a representative sample of the English popularion over age 50, we general panel date on total consumption from the...

This paper uses household level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) over the period 1991 to 2008 to analyse the driving factors of movements in the German household savings rate. Specifically, it analyses the impact of the precautionary savings motive and the impact of the 2002...

This paper investigates the co-movements of job security perceptions and household saving rates using data from the 1992 to 2010 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel. The empirical analysis reveals that higher job insecurity is generally accompanied by slightly lower saving which suggests...

Using a model where households can save in either a safe asset or in an illiquid, tax-advantaged pension, we assess the extent to which those who recently reached the state pension age in the UK have saved optimally for retirement. The policy environment specified closely matches that prevailing...

Much of the focus of the UK pensions policy debate over the past decade has been on the adequacy (or otherwise) of private retirement saving. In this paper, we present the first assessment of the optimality of the retirement resources of English couple households born in the 1940s. Here,...

In this paper we document significantly steeper declines in nondurable expenditures in the UK compared to the US, in spite of income paths being similar. We explore several possible causes, including different employment paths, housing ownership and expenses, levels and paths of health status,...