Prior research on the demand for life insurance in household portfolio holdings has not made a clear distinction between portfolio shifts resulting from active allocation decisions and those resulting from passive acceptance. Our study examines the relationship between household portfolio...

A life-cycle savings model was tested to analyze consumption patterns of elderly U.S. households, using the 1990 and 1991 BLS Interview Survey of Consumer Expenditures. The model implies substantial, planned decreases in consumption after retirement, regardless of income patterns. The empirical...

We propose a theoretical framework, supplemented by empirical evidence, to study how household financial leverage affects labor skills acquisition and labor supply. Unlike labor income, acquired skills are inseparable from individuals and do not accrue to creditors at default, thus making them...

In this paper, we examine the issue of consumption insurance in the context of urban China, where the wage structure and social security system changed dramatically during the 1990s. Using a national representative household survey from 1992 to 2003, we construct a pseudo panel dataset to study...