Wage arrears are widespread in Russia, and are one of the main causes of uncertainty in the labour market. In this paper, we use the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey over the period 1994-98 to construct a new and improved measure of household income risk, based on the uncertainty due to...

We propose a new method to test for efficient risk pooling that allows for intertemporal smoothing, non-homothetic consumption, and heterogeneous risk and time preferences. The method is composed of three steps. The first one allows for precautionary savings by the aggregate risk pooling group....

Retired households, especially those with high lifetime income, decumulate their wealth very slowly, and many die leaving large estates. The three leading explanations for the ‘retirement savings puzzle' are the desire to insure against uncertain lifespans and medical expenses, the desire to...