Despite the centrality of credit and debt in the financial lives of Americans, little is known about how U.S. consumers' access and utilization of credit changes in the short and long term, and how these changes are related to changes in U.S. consumers' debt. This paper uses data from the...

This paper discusses three alternative assumptions concerning household preferences (altruism, self-interest, and a desire for dynasty building) and shows that these assumptions have very different implications for bequest motives and bequest division. After reviewing some of the literature on...

Life cycle theory is applied to determine which households are more likely to have negative net worth. Negative net worth household characteristics are examined using data from the 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001, 2004, and 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances. Logit Analysis showed households in survey...

Despite the centrality of credit and debt in the financial lives of Americans, little is known about how U.S. consumers' access and utilization of credit changes in the short and long term, and how these changes are related to changes in U.S. consumers' debt. This paper uses data from the...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the wealth decumulation behavior of the retired elderly in Japan using unique information from two household surveys, and by so doing, attempts to assess the relative importance of precautionary saving and bequest motives in explaining the lower than...

We establish a powerful method to solve the life-cycle consumption choice problem of an individual facing biometric risks that are uninsurable. Problems of this type are notoriously hard to solve and closed-form solutions are unknown. The solution is obtained by optimizing over a parametrized...