Several explanations for the observed limited stock market participation have been offered in the literature. One of the most promising one is the presence of market frictions mostly in the form of fixed entry and/or transaction costs. Empirical studies strongly point to a significant structural...

This paper is an attempt to answer the long standing question of whether households with higher lifetime income save a larger fraction of their income. The major difficulty in empirically assessing the relationship between lifetime incomes and saving rates is to construct a credible proxy for...

Canadian household prescription drug expenditures are studied using different years of the Statistics Canada Family Expenditure Survey. Master files are used, expanding the number of available years and permitting provincial rather than regional identifiers. Nonparametric Engel curves are...

Identifying the effect of differential taxation on portfolio allocation requires exogenous variation in marginal tax rates. Marginal tax rates vary with income, but income surely affects portfolio choice directly. In systems of individual taxation – like Canada’s – couples with the same...

We examine retired Canadians’ subjective survey reports of satisfaction with finances,and with life, relative to the period before retirement.

Identifying the effect of differential taxation on portfolio allocation requires exogenous variation in marginal tax rates. Marginal tax rates vary with income, but income surely affects portfolio choice directly. In systems of individual taxation – like Canada’s – couples with the same...

This paper estimates the effect of labour income uncertainty on financial wealth and portfolio allocation using two data sources. Wealth and portfolio choice information is obtained from the master files of the new Canadian Survey of Financial Security 1999 (SFS). Labour income risk proxies are...

We examine retired Canadians’ subjective survey reports of satisfaction with finances,and with life, relative to the period before retirement.

Canadian household prescription drug expenditures are studied using different years of the Statistics Canada Family Expenditure Survey. Master files are used, expanding the number of available years and permitting provincial rather than regional identifiers. Nonparametric Engel curves are...

This paper investigates the responsiveness of household portfolios to tax incentives by exploiting a substantial tax reform that altered after-tax returns and cost of debt for a large number of households. An extraordinary panel data set that covers two years before and after the reform is used...