We designed a commitment savings product for a Philippine bank and implemented it using a randomized control methodology. The savings product was intended for individuals who want to commit now to restrict access to their savings, and who were sophisticated enough to engage in such a mechanism....

Modern macroeconomics empirically addresses economy-wide incentives behind economic actions by using insights from the way a single representative household would behave. This analytical approach requires that incentives of the poor and the rich are strictly aligned. In empirical analysis a...

Most simulated micro-founded macro models use solely consumer-demand aggregates in order to estimate deep economy-wide preference parameters, which are useful for policy evaluation. The underlying demand-aggregation properties that this approach requires, should be easy to empirically disprove:...

This paper incorporates two empirically-grounded insights into a dynamic life cycle portfolio choice model: the fact that investors forego the opportunity to accumulate job-specific skills when they spend time managing their own money, and the observation that efficiency in financial decision...

This paper presents the partial analytical solution to a model of periodic consumption that incorporates imperfect capital markets and uncertainty. Our model assumes that consumption decisions occur more frequently than income receipt. We show that the week specific consumption functions can be...

In this paper, we examine the effect of observed and unobserved heterogeneity in the desire to die with positive net worth. Using a structural life-cycle model nested in a switching regression with unknown sample separation, we find that roughly three-fourths of the elderly single population has...

Evolution of consumers' preferences has been recognized by many scholars as being key to understanding technological change. However, mainstream economics cannot account for the seemingly irrational behavior of consumers based on changes in taste – consumer theory lacks exibility and accuracy...

The paper considers the problems of interpreting subjects’ responses to laboratory intertemporal choice and matching tasks that arise from (i) the existence of capital markets outside the laboratory; (ii) the distinction between observable income and unobservable consumption. It distinguishes...

The present research, which covers the latest residential boom and bust cycle, highlights that there are no uniform or constant time invariant wealth, housing, and income relations. Even more important, wealth composition is shown to be a significant determinant of consumption. The marginal...

The main research question of this paper is whether or not the risk of family disruption has an impact on the consumption/saving decisions of households. Although little empirical work exists in this area, often presenting indirect evidence, the theory is divided over the effect of family risk...