This paper employs cohort technique and Consumer Expenditure Survey data to construct average age-profiles of consumption and income over the working lives of typical households across different education and occupation groups. Using these profiles, we estimate a structural model of optimal...

Simple life cycle and permanent income hypotheses imply that changes in consumption should be unforecastable. Rational forward-looking agents ought to smooth consumption over the life cycle and exhaust the asset stock accumulated during the working career in retirement. Empirical observations...

In this paper, we conduct a U.S.- Japan comparison of the importance of retirement saving and of the determinants thereof using micro data from the "U.S.- Japan Comparison Survey of Saving," a binational household survey conducted in 1996 by the Institute for Posts and Telecommunications Policy...

Differences in individual wealth holdings are widely viewed as a driving force of economic inequality. However, as this finding relies on cross-section data, we may confuse older with wealthier. We propose a new method to adjust for age effects in cross-sections, which eliminates transitory...

This paper tests whether the Ricardian Equivalence proposition holds in a life cycle consumption laboratory experiment. This proposition is a fundamental assumption underlying numerous studies on intertemporal choice and has important implications for tax policy. Using nonparametric and panel...

This paper tests whether the Ricardian Equivalence proposition holds in a life cycle consumption laboratory experiment. This proposition is a fundamental assumption underlying numerous studies on intertemporal choice and has important implications for tax policy. Using nonparametric and panel...

In the literature, econometricians typically assume that household income is the sum of a random walk permanent component and a transitory component, with uncorrelated permanent and transitory shocks. Using data on realized individual incomes and individual expectations of future incomes from...

Supersedes Working Paper 09-7. We estimate a structural model of optimal life-cycle housing and nonhousing consumption in the presence of labor income and house price uncertainties. The model postulates constant elasticity of substitution between housing service and nonhousing consumption and...

The proliferation of new data sets and their harmonization with the older data sets have allowed researchers to make significant progress in our understanding of how individuals allocate their time away from market work. We highlight how these new data can be used to test theories of time use...

This paper presents an empirical analysis of a life cycle model. We incorporate labor supply and family structure into the standard precautionary savings model and estimate structural parameters based on the moment conditions for the life cycle profiles of consumption, working hours, and wealth...