Households systematically overvalue or undervalue their houses. We compute house value misperception as the difference between self-reported and market house values. Misperception is sizable, countercyclical, and persistent. We find that a 1 percent increase in house overvaluation results, on...

Inflation for retirees is different from, and mostly higher than, the macroeconomic (average) inflation rate for the entire population. In the U.S. for example, the Consumer Price Index for the Urban population (CPI-U) calculated and reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has a lesser...

We document the pattern by which Canadians de-accumulate financial wealth during retirement – and find it rather puzzling. While the Modigliani lifecycle model can justify a variety of de-accumulation or draw down rates depending on risk preferences, the existence of asymmetric taxes imply...

The paper provides some guidelines to individuals with defined contribution (DC) pension plans on how to manage pension savings both before and after retirement. We argue that decisions regarding investment, annuity payments, and the size of death sum should not only depend on the individual's...

A data driven Neural Network (NN) optimization framework is proposed to determine optimal asset allocation during the accumulation phase of a defined contribution pension scheme. In contrast to parametric model based solutions computed by a partial differential equation approach, the proposed...

We consider the portfolio selection problem in the accumulation phase of a defined contribution (DC) pension scheme. We solve the mean-variance portfolio selection problem using the embedding technique pioneered by Zhou and Li (2000) and show that it is equivalent to a target-based optimization...

An approach for designing a menu of comprehensive income products for retirement (CIPRs) is proposed and demonstrated. The approach entails for steps: defining and characterising member types based on selected attributes; specifying a utility function to capture the objectives and preferences of...

Attempted dynamic replication based valuation of equity options is analyzed using the Optimal Hedge Monte-Carlo (OHMC) method. Detailed here are (1) the option hedging strategy and its costs; (2) irreducible hedging errors associated with realistically fat-tailed & asymmetric return...