This paper uses a heterogeneous-agent overlapping-generations model to examine the fiscal and distributional consequences of introducing a means test in US Social Security. I find that a means test, that is, conditioning benefit payments on a household's earnings or assets, leads to a higher...

This paper specifies and estimates a structural dynamic stochastic model of the way individuals make retirement and saving choices in an uncertain world, and applies that model to analyze the effects of the stock market bubble on retirement behavior. The model includes individual variation both...

This paper estimates the economic and non-economic returns to volunteering for prime-aged women. A woman's decision to engage in unpaid work, and to marry and have children, is formulated as a forward-looking discrete choice dynamic programming problem. Simulated maximum likelihood estimates of...

Although rational consumers without bequest motives are better oÞ investing exclusively with annuitized instruments in partial equilibrium, we demonstrate the welfare effect of annuitization is ambiguous in general equilibrium on account of the pecuniary externality. Accidental bequests improve...

In the present paper an empirical analysis will point out that government debt as a percentage of GDP has a negative impact (among others) on banking profitability. This impact will be even worse when this debt as a percentage of GDP exceeds a certain critical level. The sample covers during the...

The purpose of this paper is to understand the effects of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution (EIS) and risk aversion on savings separately and determine which coefficient is more important factor for precautionary savings. This is an important question since a significant fraction of...

Moral hazard models with hidden saving decisions are useful to study such diverse problems as unemployment insurance, income taxation, executive compensation, or human capital policies. How can we solve such models? In general, this is very difficult. Under the conditions derived in this paper,...

In private pre-funded retirement savings systems, workers can be compelled by regulation to make minimum contributions to retirement accounts. We examine the impact of compulsory contributions into retirement savings (superannuation) accounts on individuals' lifetime consumption and wealth using...

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, there is increased concern about the potentially catastrophic pension default risk, which results in significant decreases in pension benefits. In order to address the challenge of annuity income uncertainty, I propose a dynamic annuitization...

In this paper, we develop a new dynamic programming approach for solving an optimal retirement model in a two-dimensional incomplete market, which is induced by forced unemployment risk and borrowing constraints. We show that the two dimensions jointly affect an individual's optimal consumption,...