In a nationally-representative sample, we predict retirement savings using survey-based elicitations of exponential-growth bias (EGB) and present bias (PB). We find that EGB, the tendency to neglect compounding, and PB, the tendency to value the present over the future, are highly significant...

This paper suggests a method for estimating the distribution of discount rates using panel data on income and wealth. Using the English Longitudinal Survey of Ageing (ELSA), a representative sample of the English popularion over age 50, we general panel date on total consumption from the...

This paper studies the effect of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on saving behaviour. Two important characteristics of HIV result in opposing forces on savings: mortality increases, which reduces savings, and long-term illness risk increases, which enhances savings. We use a two period life-cycle model...

There is ample empirical evidence documenting widespread financial illiteracy and limited pension knowledge. At the same time, the distribution of wealth is widely dispersed and many workers arrive on the verge of retirement with few or no personal assets. In this paper, we investigate the...

There is ample empirical evidence documenting widespread financial illiteracy and limited pension knowledge. At the same time, the distribution of wealth is widely dispersed and many workers arrive on the verge of retirement with few or no personal assets. In this paper, we investigate the...

Normative analyses of household financial decisions typically assume parameters of the household utility function. Some general issues on parameter assumptions for normative analysis are discussed in this study. We review selected normative household analyses appearing in finance and economics...

This study examines the divergence between objective and subjective assessment of retirement adequacy, analyzing U.S. households with a full-time worker age 35 to 60 in the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances. Of those households, 58% have objective inadequacy, and 54% have subjective inadequacy,...

On the basis of a concatenation of fifteen Belgian household budget surveys from 1995/96 to 2010, we investigate the impact of demographic factors, such as ageing and changing household composition, on saving behaviour. Not focusing on high frequency events (e.g. business cycles and unexpected...

We adapt the design of five experimental studies on retirement decision-making and conduct reproductions with a larger sample from the broader population. We reproduce most of the main effects of the original studies. In particular, we find that consumption decisions are less efficient when...

We study the association of the perseverance-of-effort (PoE) and the consistency-of-interests (CoI) components of the psychological measure of grit, with economic measures of impatience and decreasing impatience (time inconsistency), respectively, in the general population. We find that...