This chapter is concerned with the distribution of personal wealth, which usually refers to the material assets that can be sold in the marketpace, although on occasion pension rights are also included. We summarise the available evidence on wealth distribution for a number of countries. This...

In this paper, we examine the effect of observed and unobserved heterogeneity in the desire to die with positive net worth. Using a structural life-cycle model nested in a switching regression with unknown sample separation, we find that roughly 70 percent of the elderly single population has a...

The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act had a profound impact on the demographic and skill composition of immigrants arriving in the U.S. A large literature has investigated the relative earnings of immigrants and natives, but much less is known about relative wealth accumulation and the...

This article compares the retirement preparations of immigrant and native-born Americans aged 51 or older. The authors estimate the present value of future income streams in calculating measures of comprehensive wealth and an annualized equivalent. In addition to some significant differences in...

The intention of this study was to document how closely households follow normative descriptions of financial behavior in relation to their financial planning horizon. Modern Portfolio Theory predicts that households, in general, exhibit risk aversion. Aversion to wealth volatility should...

This paper presents a new model of time-additive consumption-wealth utility. Like recursive utility, this model separates the roles of risk aversion and the intertemporal elasticity of consumption allowing it to be calibrated to a wider variety of data. Indeed, the observed equity premium and...

The possibility that individuals may derive utility from the mere fact of holding wealth has long been recognized. A simple intertemporal model featuring utility from accumulation is used here to examine consumption and savings, the choice between inter vivos gifts and bequests (both to...

How are substitution in the spatial and in the temporal sense connected? Can estimates based on data with spatial variation be transmitted into values appropriate for exploring temporal variation, and vice versa? This paper, building on, inter alia, Frisch (1959), attempts to give some...

We use administrative data for Norway to estimate an incomplete-market life-cycle model of retired singles and couples with a bequest motive, health-dependent utility, and uncertain longevity and health. We allow the parameters of the bequest utility to differ between households with and without...

Various deviations from the Permanent Income consumption model with rational expectations have been discussed in the literature, including loss aversion and liquidity constraints. In the existing literature, these two types of consumption asymmetry are usually considered as mutually exclusive....