Using a representative online panel from the US, we examine how individuals' macroeconomic expectations causally affect their personal economic prospects and their behavior. To exogenously vary respondents' expectations, we provide them with different professional forecasts about the likelihood...

We use data from the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) to explore how household asset portfolios in the United States evolved between 1989 and 2016. Throughout this period, two key assets - housing and financial market assets - drove the household balance sheet evolution;...

This paper presents survey results on the incidence of individual retirement account (IRA) ownership in the United States and the contribution, rollover, and withdrawal activity of IRA-owning households. IRAs play an important role in US households’ retirement saving: In mid-2022, more than...