This paper estimates the effect of job loss on mortality for older male workers with strong labor force attachment. Using Dutch administrative data, we find that job loss due to sudden firm closure increased the probability to die within five years by a sizable 0.60 percentage points....

We study whether the retirement replacement rate influences households' saving behavior by using the RAND Health and Retirement Study data file. We estimate quantile regressions with the ratio of wealth to permanent income as dependent variable, and age dummies and the retirement replacement...

To test some of the implications of the life cycle-permanent income hypothesis we exploit differences in expected retirement replacement rates between lowly and highly educated households. We examine education-specific age-wealth profiles at the household level. Our sample is an unbalanced panel...

This paper assesses the sophistication of pension funds’ investment policies using data on 748 Dutch pension funds during the 1999–2006 period. We develop three indicators of sophistication: gross rounding of investment choices, investments in alternative sophisticated asset classes and...

The paper investigates risk attitudes among different types of individuals. We use several di erent measures of risk attitudes, including questions on choices between uncertain income streams suggested by Barsky et al. (1997) and a number of ad hoc measures. As in Barsky et al. (1997) and...

We estimate a nominal life-cycle portfolio choice model using shopping coststo generate money demand. The model delivers realistic implications forstock market participation and portfolio composition because money crowdsout other assets at lower levels of wealth. We quantify how...

We explicitly derive and explore the optimal consumption and portfolio policies of a loss- averse individual who endogenously updates his reference level over time. We find that he protects his current consumption by delaying painful reductions in consumption after a drop in wealth, and...

Drawing on a novel database of the 401(k) plans of 296 firms, we examine the international equity allocations of 3.8 million individuals over the period 2005-2011. We find enormous cross-individual variation, ranging from zero to more than 75%, and strong cohort effects, with younger cohorts...

We test the relation between ambiguity aversion and five household portfolio choice puzzles: non-participation in equities, low allocations to equity, home-bias, own-company stock ownership, and portfolio under-diversification. In a representative U.S. household survey, we measure ambiguity...

We examine the daily activity and performance of a large panel of individual investors in Sweden's Premium Pension System in the period 2000 to 2010. We find that active investors outperform passive investors, and that there is a causal effect of fund changes on performance. Chosen funds...