We consider a firm which pays a worker for his effort over several periods. The more the firm pays in one period, the wealthier the worker is in the following periods, and so the more he must be paid for a given effort. This wealth effect can induce an employer to pay little initially and more...

We explore asset holding diversification by Australian households, in particular, the household asset diversification participation decision (whether or not to diversify at all) is jointly estimated with the decision of how much to diversify. In so doing, recent literature on the modelling of...

The tendency to underestimate the future value of a variable growing at a constant rate, an example of exponential growth bias, has been linked to household financial decision making. We show that exponential growth bias and standard measures of financial literacy are negatively correlated in a...

If income pooling indicates primary earners' willingness to trade part of their income with spouses who earn less and work more in household production, then among specialized couples income pooling will be positively associated with the price of commercial domestic services, substitutes for...

Using data from the US Health and Retirement Study, we study the causal effect of increased health insurance coverage through Medicare and the associated reduction in health-related background risk on financial risk-taking. Given the onset of Medicare at age 65, we identify our effect of...

Using comparable survey data from twelve European countries we investigate households' attitudes towards mortgage indebtedness. We find that a given debt burden creates much higher distress in Southern countries, France and Belgium, where fewer households have a mortgage outstanding relative to...