Euler equation estimation of intertemporal consumption models requires many, often unverifiable assumptions. These include assumptions on expectations and preferences. We aim at reducing some of these requirements by using direct subjective information on respondents' preferences and...

The authors analyze the determinants of global life satisfaction in two countries (The Netherlands and the U.S.), by using both self-reports and responses to a battery of vignette questions. They find global life satisfaction of happiness is well-described by four domains: job or daily...

Each week, the Dutch Postcode Lottery (PCL) randomly selects a postal code, and distributes cash and a new BMW to lottery participants in that code. We study the effects of these shocks on lottery winners and their neighbors. Consistent with the life-cycle hypothesis, the effects on winners’...

We provide both a theoretical and empirical analysis of the relation between administrative and survey data. By distinguishing between different sources of deviations between survey and administrative data we are able to reproduce several stylized facts. We illustrate the implications of...

The authors model (myopic) habit formation, interdependence of preferences among consumers, and demographic effects as taste shifters in a micro consumer demand model of the almost ideal demand variety. The model is estimated for Dutch micro data. The authors investigate the dynamic properties...

Inference from Web surveys may be affected by non-random selection of Web survey participants. One approach to reduce selection bias is to use propensity scores and a parallel phone survey. This approach uses demographic and additional so-called Webographic or lifestyle variables to balance...

Policy makers have often argued that an additional benefit of facilitating early retirement is that it creates employment for the young. This may happen if older and younger workers are substitutes. Nowadays policy makers' goals are to discourage early retirement to counter the economic...

It is widely believed that health plays a major role in retirement decisions. The most important problem in including health in retirement models is the lack of availability of a good measure of health at the individual level in existing data sets. This problem is exacerbated when a model...

In the first part of this paper, the authors derive explicit expressions for the direct utility functions, conditional demand equations, and concavity conditions in both price/income and quantity space for the demand system introduced by Hausman and Ruud (1984). These results are then used in an...