This paper provides a two-part empirical analysis on how actuarial reduction rates for early retirement affect current pension payments in Germany and to what extent the existence and the magnitude of these reduction rates influence people s retirement planning. First, by evaluating a large...

We study an investment experiment conducted with a representative sample of German households. Respondents invest in a safe asset and a risky asset whose return is tied to the German stock market. Experimental investments correlate with beliefs about stock market returns and exhibit desirable...

We study an investment experiment conducted with a representative sample of German households. Respondents invest in a safe asset and a risky asset whose return is tied to the German stock market. Experimental investments correlate with beliefs about stock market returns and exhibit desirable...

In the wake of the financial crisis and continued volatility in international capital markets, there is growing interest in mechanisms that can protect people against retirement account volatility. This paper explores the consequences for savers' wellbeing of implementing market-based retirement...

In the wake of the financial crisis and continued volatility in international capital markets, there is growing interest in mechanisms that can protect people against retirement account volatility. This paper explores the consequences for savers’ wellbeing of implementing market-based...

We show that preferred investment styles can be determined by the big five personality traits. Using this result, we build a tool that recommends investment styles. The resulting recommendations are significantly higher rated than random recommendations.We collected detailed personality traits...

The withdrawal of the welfare states from pensions underscores the need for a better understanding of the spatial characteristics of adoption processes in the case of financial innovations. In 2001, the German pension reform reduced the publicly provided pensions, and introduced subsidized,...

How much retirement income is needed in order to maintain one's living standard at old age? As it is difficult to find a firm basis for an empirical treatment of this question, we employ a novel approach to assessing an adequate replacement rate vis-à-vis income in the pre-retirement period. We...

This paper uses immigration as a semi-natural experiment to investigate the intergenerational transmission of culture. The culture is proxied by rates of nonmarital birth-giving and age at the first birth in the immigrant's home country. Using the Current Population Survey, Decennial Censuses,...

How much retirement income is needed in order to maintain oneś living standard at old age? As it is difficult to find a firm basis for an empirical treatment of this question, we employ a novel approach to assessing an adequate replacement rate vis-à-vis income in the pre-retirement period. We...