Assuming the loss aversion framework of Tversky and Kahneman (1992), stochastic investment and labour income processes, and a path-dependent fund target, we show that the optimal investment strategy for defined contribution pension plan members is a target-driven ‘threshold' strategy, whereby...

In the lead-up to the peak of the financial bubble (and before the onset of the global financial crisis), UK newspapers regularly touted property including owner-occupied homes as ready-made alternatives to private pensions. Having previously considered the significance of investment property...

Individual retirement savings schemes could benefit from risk-sharing mechanisms between generations that take behavioral aspects into account. We introduce a novel risk-sharing mechanism that incorporates nominal loss-aversion in two ways. First, the system avoids out-of-pocket wealth transfers...

This paper explores the joint impact of reference-dependent preferences and non- tradable risky labor income on optimal savings and portfolio decisions. We develop a non-trivial solution procedure to determine the optimal policies. Our results reveal that the impact of permanent labor income...

We use four incentivized representative surveys to study the endowment effect for lotteries in 4,000 U.S. adults. We replicate the standard finding of an endowment effect–the divergence between Willingness to Accept (WTA) and Willingness to Pay (WTP), but document three new findings. First, we...

This paper argues for an alternative methodology to estimate the value of risk to life. By relaxing the assumption of additive separability, we introduce risk aversion with respect to the length of life and show that the extended model better fits available data. This is crucial for the...

This study analyses the relation between perceived health status and intertemporal choice. We use data from experiments with real monetary rewards conduEted among students in South Africa to estimate risk and time preferences. These experimental data, based on muitiple price lists developed by...

The standard literature on the value of life relies on Yaari’s (1965) model, which includes an implicit assumption of risk neutrality with respect to life duration. To overpass this limitation, we extend the theory to a simple variety of preferences which are not necessarily additively...

We consider a formal approach to comparative risk aversion and applies it to intertemporal choice models. This allows us to ask whether standard classes of utility functions, such as those inspired by Kihlstrom and Mirman [15], Selden [26], Epstein and Zin [9] and Quiggin [24] are well-ordered...