Governments in Latin America raise little revenue from property taxation, despite arguments for its efficiency and equity. Adequate registry information would support consistent collection, but registries are costly to establish and maintain. Compared to tax collection, field experimental...

The recent housing market boom in the U.S. has caused sharp increases in residential property taxes. Anecdotal evidence suggests that rising property taxes have induced elderly homeowners to increase their labor supply. This paper uses 1992-2004 panel data from the Health and Retirement Study...

This paper analyzes the determinants of the wealth decumulation behavior of the retired elderly in Japan using unique information from two household surveys, and by so doing, attempts to assess the relative importance of precautionary saving and bequest motives in explaining the lower than...

The Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC) is the source of the nation's official household income and poverty statistics. In 2012, the CPS ASEC showed that median household income was $33,800 for householders aged 65 and over and the poverty rate was 9.1...

We review the evidence on decision making in complex choice situations—i.e., situations where there are many alternatives and/or where attributes of alternatives are difficult to understand. We focus on choices about health insurance, health care, and retirement planning, all of which are very...

This study uses the most recent wave of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine participation of aging households in the long-term care insurance market. Results suggest that households who perceived a need to move to a nursing home within the next five years and households with higher...

This paper incorporates two empirically-grounded insights into a dynamic life cycle portfolio choice model: the fact that investors forego the opportunity to accumulate job-specific skills when they spend time managing their own money, and the observation that efficiency in financial decision...

Almost half of missing women in India are of post-reproductive ages. I show that intra-household gender inequality and gender asymmetry in poverty can account for a substantial fraction of these missing women. Using a natural experiment, I link women's intra-household bargaining power to their...

This study aims to estimate the potential economic benefts of healthy ageing by obtaining estimates of the economic losses generated by functional limitations among middle-aged and older people. Utilising two data sources retrieved from nationally representative samples of the Japanese people,...

Elderly households hold most of their wealth in housing, maintain high levels of wealth throughout retirement, and often leave bequests. The value of their houses are subject to large shocks. To what extent do these shocks affect their savings, consumption, and bequests? Answering this question...