We estimate the fraction of the wealth of a sample of PSID respondents that is held because some households face greater income uncertainty than others. We first derive an equation characterizing the theoretical relationship between wealth and uncertainty in a buffer-stock model of saving. Next,...

This paper uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to provide some of the first direct evidence that wealth is systematically higher for consumers with greater income uncertainty. However, the apparent pattern of precautionary saving is not consistent with a standard parameterization of the life...

This paper analyzes the transition from the existing pay-as-you-go Social Security program to a system of funded Mandatory" Individual Retirement Accounts (MIRAs). Because of the high return on real capital relative to the very low return in a mature pay-as-you-go program, the benefits that can...

In this paper we study the transition from a pay-as-you-go system of Social Security pensions to an investment-based system in an economy in which portfolio returns and capital profitability are both uncertain. The paper extends earlier studies by Feldstein and Samwick that modeled the...

Together, pensions, social security and health insurance account for half of the wealth held by all households in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), for 60 percent of total wealth of HRS households who are in the 45th to 55th wealth percentiles, and even for 48 percent of wealth for those in...

If the United States switched to a broad-based consumption tax, than all forms of saving would enjoy the tax-preferred status reserved primarily for retirement saving vehicles under the current income tax system. Because pensions have other unique characteristics besides their tax advantage,...

The precipitous decline in tax sheltered investments after the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA) is widely attributed to the passive loss rules. These rules disallowed losses from activities in which the taxpayer did not materially participate as a current deduction against all sources of income...

Despite the prominence of management consulting firms, there is little systematic evidence in the finance and economic literature of their impact on corporate performance. This paper assembles a unique dataset of companies that announce their relationships with a management consulting firm...

Core and Guay (2001) argue that there is an increasing relation between an executive's pay-performance sensitivity (incentives) and firm risk, in contrast to the findings in Aggarwal and Samwick (1999) and the predictions of principal-agent models such as Holmstrom and Milgrom (1987). They claim...

We develop a contracting model between shareholders and managers in which optimal incentive contracts mitigate managers' propensity to diversify their firms. In our model, managers may diversify for two reasons: to reduce idiosyncratic risk and to capture private benefits. We derive comparative...