Tests using Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) unit record data from 2006/2007 to 2010/2011 indicate that Australian households on average insure against idiosyncratic income shocks. For a 10% change in income, non-durable expenditures change by 0.14%, while food...

The recent financial crisis caused a shock to private wealth. Households with low financial literacy are less likely to own risky assets directly. Therefore, fewer of them report financial losses. More importantly, financially illiterate households are more prone to sell assets that have lost in...

Deteriorating financial market conditions in 2008 intensified the debate over the ability of 401(k) plans to provide retirement income. This paper simulates the effects of the market crash of 2008 for 401(k) plan participants of various ages, earnings levels, and portfolios. Because Social...

We survey a representative sample of US households to study how exposure to the COVID-19 stock market crash affects expectations and planned behavior. Wealth shocks are associated with upward adjustments of expectations about retirement age, desired working hours, and household debt, but have...

We survey a representative sample of US households to study how exposure to the COVID-19 stock market crash affects expectations and planned behavior. Wealth shocks are associated with upward adjustments of expectations about retirement age, desired working hours, and household debt, but have...

1. This research examines the potential impact of the stock market crash of 2008-2009 on U.S. working households. The Great Recession caused financial problems for many households in terms of unemployment, business losses, and decreases in real estate values, but the broadly based decreases in...

Household time preference for US households, as measured by the planning horizon, was fairly stable for many years, but sharply changed with the onset of the Great Recession. Based on an analysis of a combination of the 1992-2013 Survey of Consumer Finances datasets, time preference increased in...

We show that the size of collateralized household debt determines an economy's vulnerability to crises of confidence. The house price feeds back on itself by contributing to a liquidity effect, which operates through the value of housing in a collateral constraint. Over a specific range of debt...

In this paper we construct a stochastic overlapping-generations general equilibrium model in which households are subject to aggregate shocks that affect both wages and asset prices. We use a calibrated version of the model to quantify how the welfare costs of severe recessions are distributed...

Among the important factors in the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 was an large ethical breakdown in the financial sector that preceded it. The sources of good behavior are multiple but religion ranks high among them. In thinking about the role of religion, most people think first of Judaism,...