Who is wealthy? This paper presents empirical estimates of household movements into and out of the top percents of the wealth distribution over individual life cycles. There are life-cycle motives and precautionary motives for wealth accumulation. The opportunities to accumulate wealth create...

This study explored the psychological mechanisms that underlie the retirement planning and saving tendencies of Dutch and American workers. Participants were 988 Dutch and 429 Americans, 25-64 years of age. Analyses were designed to: (a) examine the extent to which structural variables were...

Deciding how much to save for retirement is a difficult task that includes many uncertainties. In this paper, we use data from a representative Dutch household panel to study the impact of uncertainty regarding one's savings adequacy on retirement savings contributions and information search...

This paper uses micro data from four OECD countries (the United States, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands), to assess the determinants of household debt holding and to investigate whether or not credit constraints are important for household debt holding. We extend the existing literature in...

A foundation is provided for a correct and accurate analysis of the relationship between monetary values and physical dimensions in economic production. A distinction is proposed between direct and indirect substitution. Linked to this, a classification is offered of various types of...

Nancy Cartwright views models as blueprints for nomological machines - machines which, if properly shielded, generate lawlike behaviour or regularities. Marcel Boumans has argued that we can look for devices inside models which enable us to measure aspects of these regularities. So, if models do...

This paper estimates the impact of the murder of film maker Theo vanGogh on November 2, 2004, on listed house prices in Amsterdam with aunique dataset. We use an hedonic-market approach to show that gen-eral attitudes towards Muslim minorities were negatively affected by themurder. Specifically,...