The relationship between home ownership of Dutch elderly households and age is strongly negative. Other studies suggest that this age gradient should be attributed to a cohort effect. In this paper we investigate where those cohort effects come from. We also observe that mortgage ownership among...

This paper shows that a power utility specification of preferences over total expenditure (ie. CRRA preferences) implies that intratemporal demands are in the PIGL/PIGLOG class. This class generates (at most) rank two demand systems and we can test the validity of power utility on cross-section...

Recent research has demonstrated that some households cut back on expenditures in an unemployment spell. Moreover, some of these households respond to variation in the transitory income provided by unemployment insurance benefits. This suggests that these households are constrained in the sense...

This paper shows that a power utility specification of preferences over total expenditure (ie. CRRA preferences) implies that intratemporal demands are in the PIGL/PIGLOG class. This class generates (at most) rank two demand systems and we can test the validity of power utility on cross-section...

Does retirement represent a state of relative prosperity or a time of unanticipated economic hardship? To assess whether individuals are successful in smoothing their well-being across the transition to retirement we analyse measures of relative subjective wellbeing (SWB) in the Australian HILDA...

Identifying the effect of the financial incentives created by social security systems on the retirement behaviour of individuals requires exogenous variation in program parameters. In this paper we study the 1993 Australian Age Pension reform which increased the eligibility age for women to...

This paper uses a time-series of cross-sections drawn from three different surveys to explore life-cycle profiles of housing arrangements in Canada. Synthetic cohort (quasi-panel) methods are employed to disentangle age profiles from cohort effects. The results suggest limited "downsizing" in...

Several explanations for the observed limited stock market participation have been offered in the literature. One of the most promising one is the presence of market frictions mostly in the form of fixed entry and/or transaction costs. Empirical studies strongly point to a significant structural...

We describe the trajectory of pension reform in the United Kingdom, which has focussed on keeping the cost of public pension programmes down during a period of steady population ageing whilst attempting to maintain an adequate minimum level of income security for low income households in...

The life-cycle model is the standard framework which economists use to think about the intertemporal allocation of time, money and effort. The model suggests that households should `smooth' expenditures. One of the strengths of the model is that it provides a single framework which integrates...