There is ample empirical evidence documenting widespread financial illiteracy and limited pension knowledge. At the same time, the distribution of wealth is widely dispersed and many workers arrive on the verge of retirement with few or no personal assets. In this paper, we investigate the...

We study the role of household saving behaviour, of individual motives for saving and that of perceived liquidity constraints in 15 Euro Area countries. The empirical analysis is based on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey, a new harmonized data set collecting detailed information on...

We examined the mortgage interest tax relief (MIR) system in the Netherlands and reforms to this system, based on answers to direct questions in survey data for the period 2010-2012. As well as tracking individuals over time and at strategic moments in the process of the policy reform, this...

Survey data show that many respondents save for retirement in unconventional retirement accounts, such as investments in real estate. In countries where retirement savings are not mandatory for self-employed, representatives of this group often report this as an argument against making...

The focus of this paper in on the effect that changes in income and financial assets have on household consumption in the Netherlands over the period 2009-2012. The empirical evidence is based on the LISS panel, a longitudinal survey representative of the Dutch-speaking population conducted and...

This paper provides new field evidence on risk preferences over small stakes. Using unique population and survey data on deductible choice in Dutch universal health insurance, we find that risk preferences are a dominant factor in decision aking. In fact, our results indicate that risk...

This paper examines the predictive power of weather for electricity prices in day ahead markets in real time. We find that next-day weather forecasts improve the forecast accuracy of Scandinavian day-ahead electricity prices substantially in terms of point forecasts, suggesting that weather...

The Boskin report (1996) concluded that the US consumer price index (CPI) overestimated the inflation by 1.1 percentage points. This was due to several measurement errors in the CPI. One of them is called quality change bias. In this paper two methods are compared which can be used to eliminate...

This report addresses the question whether economic theory can explain the choice of payment media for over-the-counter payments. A survey of the literature reveals that most of the existing microeconomic models are limited to the explanation of the size of cash balance. Only two models describe...

Evidence suggests only a minority of American households feels "confident" about retirement saving adequacy. Little is known about why people fail to plan for retirement, and whether planning and information costs might affect retirement saving patterns. To better understand these issues, we...