Since 2002 the German government seeks to stimulate private retirement savings by means of special allowances and tax exemptions - the so-called Riester scheme. We apply matching and panel regression techniques to assess the impact of the Riester scheme on households' propensities to save in a...

Since 2002 the German government seeks to stimulate private retirement savings by means of special allowances and tax exemptions - the so-called Riester scheme. We apply matching and panel regression techniques to assess the impact of the Riester scheme on households' propensities to save in a...

Due to demographic change the replacement rates of the German statutory pension scheme will decrease over the next decades. Voluntary savings for retirement will therefore gain more and more relevance in order to maintain one’s standard of living during retirement. This article examines the...

Traditionally, households have been seen as acting as a single unit when it comes to savings. Although this might be correct for some parts of household savings, we question the correctness of the unitary model with respect to non-mandatory retirement savings. To answer this question we analyze...

Since 2002 the German government seeks to stimulate private retirement savings by means of special allowances and tax exemptions – the so-called Riester scheme. We apply matching and panel regression techniques to assess the impact of the Riester scheme on households' propensities to save in a...

Frequent shifting of household portfolio composition may erode wealth due to poor market timing and transaction costs. If household preferences are stable, the optimal wealth maximizing strategy is periodically rebalancing to maintain a relatively constant ratio of investment assets to wealth...

Frequent shifting of household portfolio composition may erode wealth due to poor market timing and transaction costs. If household preferences are stable, the optimal wealth maximizing strategy is periodically rebalancing to maintain a relatively constant ratio or investment assets to wealth...

This study uses a national dataset to examine the association among risk tolerance, financial literacy, and goals-based savings behavior of households. The results indicate that three out of five households do not have any emergency funds set aside, and about half the households have not...

Traditionally, households have been seen as acting as a single unit when it comes to savings. Although this might be correct for some parts of household savings, we question the correctness of the unitary model with respect to non-mandatory retirement savings. To answer this question we analyze...

This study uses the most recent wave of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine participation of aging households in the long-term care insurance market. Results suggest that households who perceived a need to move to a nursing home within the next five years and households with higher...