Germany has one of the most generous public pension and health insurance systems of the world, yet private savings are high and remain positive until old age, even for most low income households. How can we explain what we might want to term the \"German savings puzzle\"? We provide a...

We analyse life-cycle saving decisions when households use simple heuristics, or rules of thumb, rather than solve the underlying intertemporal optimization problem. We simulate life-cycle saving decisions using three simple rules and compute utility losses relative to the solution of the...

We analyse life-cycle saving decisions when households use simple heuristics, or rules of thumb, rather than solve the underlying intertemporal optimisation problem. We simulate life-cycle saving decisions using three simple rules and compute utility losses relative to the solution of the...