Debt-induced crises, including the subprime, are usually attributed exclusively to supply-side factors. We examine the role of social influences on debt culture, emanating from perceived average income of peers. Utilizing unique information from a household survey representative of the Dutch...

The ability of consumers to make informed financial decisions improves their ability to develop sound personal finance. This paper uses a panel dataset from Russia, an economy in which consumer loans grew at an astounding rate - from about US$10 billion in 2003 to over US$170 billion in 2008 -...

Americans' indebtedness increased dramatically since the 1980s — a trend likely to have important implications for retirement security. On one hand, higher indebtedness might compel individuals to keep working and delay Social Security benefit claiming so they can pay off their financial...

Using a stochastic general equilibrium model with overlapping generations, this paper studies (i) the effects on both extensive and intensive labour supply responses to changes in fertility rates, and (ii) the potential of a retirement reform to mitigate the effects of fertility changes on...

We investigate inattention on the part of pension plan participants using a novel dataset covering savings in Sweden's Premium Pension System, data that permit direct comparison of the investment behaviors of pension and retail mutual fund investors. Unlike retail mutual fund investors, pension...

Many pension funds have a mismatch between assets and liabilities, taking more risks than securing liabilities implies. This puts fixed claims of retirees at risk. For the cases with and without macro-risk, this paper analyses the implications of this asset-liability mismatch for welfare,...

We document and study international differences in both ownership and holdings of stocks, private businesses, homes, and mortgages among households aged fifty or more in thirteen countries, using new and comparable survey data. We employ counter-factual techniques to decompose observed...

This paper examines the impact of participants' age distribution on the asset allocation of Dutch pension funds, using a unique data set of pension fund investment plans for 2007. Theory predicts a negative effect of age on (strategic) equity exposures. We observe that pension funds do indeed...

This paper provides the first joint analysis of household stockholding participation, location among stockholding modes, and participation spillovers. Our model matches observed participation, conditional and unconditional, and asset location patterns. We find that financial sophistication...

This paper investigates the international spillovers of government debt and the associated risk of inflation within a monetary union when countries have different pension systems. I use a stochastic two-country two-period overlapping-generations model, where one country has PAYG pensions and the...