Integrating economic experiments into household surveys provides unique possibilities. We introduce the German Socio-Economic Panel's Innovation Sample (SOEPIS), which offers researchers detailed panel data and the possibility to collect personalized experimental and survey data for free. We...

Today's retirees face the daunting task of determining appropriate investment and spending strategies for their accumulated savings. Financial economists have addressed their problem using an expected utility framework. In contrast, many financial advisors rely instead on rules of thumb. We show...

We use micro data on young married households from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers in order to analyze the importance of borrowing constraints in Japan. We find (1) that 8 to 15 percent of young married Japanese households are borrowing-constrained, (2) that household assets and the...

Informal lending and savings institutions exist around the world, and often include regular door-to-door deposit collection of cash. Some banks have adopted similar services in order to expand access to banking services in areas that lack physical branches. Using a randomized control trial, we...

The price elasticity of demand for credit has major implications for macroeconomics, finance, and development. We present estimates of this parameter derived from a randomized trial. The experiment was implemented by a consumer microfinance lender in South Africa and identifies demand curves...

Do asset prices affect real activity? This question has taken on a new importance in recent years, as asset values first surged at the end of 1990s and, thereafter, dramatically retreated. This report reviews the available theoretical and empirical evidence regarding asset price and wealth...

In this paper we propose an equilibrium model for the housing market which provides an explanation for observed housing consumption of households over their lifetimes. The moving behavior of households is described as a stochastic dynamic process in which households' moving decisions depend on...

This paper considers optimal investment behaviour when investment options evolve deterministically or stochastically over time and investments are irreversible and indivisible. It extends the standard investment-under-uncertainty set-up with a single investment option to the case of repeated...

Despite growth in the numbers of self-employed workers, there is little research on the retirement planning behavior of this group. The purpose of this study was to identify characteristics of self-employed workers and determine factors that lead to increased savings for retirement. Findings...

The paper studies the impact of the portfolio constraint imposed by the consumption demand for housing (the quot;housing constraintquot;) on the household's optimal holdings of financial assets. Since the ratio of housing to net worth declines as the household accumulates wealth, the housing...