Previous research finds a systematic decrease in consumption at retirement, a finding that is inconsistent with the Life-Cycle/Permanent Income Hypothesis if retirement is an expected event. In this paper, we use workers' subjective beliefs about their retirement dates as an instrument for...

Our objective is to identify the trading strategy that would allow an investor to take advantage of "excessive" stock price volatility and "sentiment" fluctuations. We construct a general-equilibrium model of sentiment. In it, there are two classes of agents and stock prices are excessively...

This study examines the relationship between time discounting, other sources of time preference, and intertemporal choices about smoking. Using a survey fielded for our analysis, we elicit rates of time discount from choices in financial and health domains. We also examine the relationship...

Although the theoretical importance of expectations in decision-making is well-known to economists, only a few empirical papers investigate the impact of individual subjective expectations on economic outcomes. This paper examines the link between expectations of future job losses and the...

In this paper we present evidence from high-frequency data collections dedicated to tracking the effects of the financial crisis and great recession on American households. These data come from surveys that we conducted in the American Life Panel - an Internet survey run by RAND Labor and...

We study trading behavior and the properties of prices in informationally complex markets. Our model is based on the single-period version of the linear-normal framework of Kyle (1985). We allow for essentially arbitrary correlations among the random variables involved in the model: the value of...

The paper studies asset pricing in informationally decentralized markets. These markets have two key frictions: trading is decentralized (bilateral), and some agents have private information. We analyze how uninformed agents acquire information over time from their bilateral trades. In...

This paper shows how rational investors can have different degrees of optimism regarding the prospects of the economy, even if they share exactly the same information regarding all economic fundamentals. The key is that heterogeneity in expectations regarding endogenous outcomes can emerge as a...

We extend Kyle's (1985) model of insider trading to the case where liquidity provided by noise traders follows a general stochastic process. Even though the level of noise trading volatility is observable, in equilibrium, measured price impact is stochastic. If noise trading volatility is...

As growing numbers of retirees reach retirement age with substantial balances in self-directed retirement plans, annuities are likely to become increasingly important instruments for drawing down retirement savings. This study explores recent trends in the pricing of single-premium annuity...