In 2001, the voluntary additional Riester pension scheme was implemented in Germany. Financial subsidies should incentivize people to increase their private pension savings. In this paper, we hypothesize that these publicly subsidized savings mainly replace existing not subsidized savings and...

Financing consumption of the elderly in the face of the projected increase in life expectancy is a key challenge for economic policy. Moreover, standard structural models with fully rational agents suggest that about 50-60 percent of old-age consumption is financed with voluntary savings, even...

Estimates for a structural model of savings and labour supply calculated on UK field data support the hypothesis of quasi-hyperbolic discounting. The estimated model indicates that a DC pension encourages increased saving and labour supply prior to pension age, and substantially reduced labour...

The main goal of this article is to describe the attitudes towards bequests as the motive for saving up for old age. The article reports the results of our own qualitative and quantitative research. The reasons for additional, voluntary saving up for old age, as seen in the conducted qualitative...

Much of the focus of the UK pensions policy debate over the past decade has been on the adequacy (or otherwise) of private retirement saving. In this paper, we present the first assessment of the optimality of the retirement resources of English couple households born in the 1940s. Here,...

Relationships between individual traits and savings decisions vary geographically. Understanding the structure of such relationships is interesting in general, but it is particularly important in the case of the Germany, where the pension reform of 2001 significantly decreased the level of...

Using micro data on Japanese households, I provide an overview of the level of financial literacy in Japan, analyze the determinants of financial literacy and link financial literacy to retirement planning. Overall, the level of financial literacy is low in Japan. Surprisingly, many Japanese...

This paper exploits an administrative regulation in Singapore that allows individuals to withdraw between 10 to 30 percent of their pension savings at age 55. We find a large and highly significant increase in individuals' bank account balances within the first month of turning 55, which...

The objective of the paper is to explore the saving and consumption responses of a representative household to a range of policy interventions such as changes in taxes and pension settings. To achieve this, it develops a two-period life-cycle model. The representative household maximizes...

Die Riester-Förderung soll dazu beitragen, dass häufiger und mehr für die Altersvorsorge gespart wird. Der Einfluss der Riester-Förderung auf die Sparneigung von Haushalten mit niedrigem Einkommen ist dabei ein zentrales Kriterium zur ökonomischen Evaluation dieser Politik. Unsere...