Using a lifecycle model of consumption, saving and portfolio choice combined with linked survey and administrative data on wealth and lifetime earnings we evaluate measures of retirement preparedness. We estimate heterogeneous discount factors for households and compare these estimates of their...

This paper investigates whether assuming that households possess advance information on their income shocks helps to overcome the difficulty of standard models to understand consumption insurance in the US. As our main result, we find that the quantitative relevance of advance information...

The number of employed persons in Germany has grown by over five million since 2000, in part due to an increase in immigration. This development is reflected in private household income, which has increased by 12 percent over the same period. Since 2013, all income groups have been benefiting...

Unabhängig davon, ob der Grundrenten-Beschluss der Koalitionsparteien tatsächlich umgesetzt wird, ist er von Interesse, da die Diskussion über die noch offene Finanzierung der geplanten Grundrente auf die grundsätzliche Frage verweist, welche Risiken die Gesetzliche Rentenversicherung...

Deutschland hat mittlerweile seit acht Jahren Überschüsse oder ausgeglichene öffentliche Haushalte zu verzeichnen. Entsprechend ist auch die Schuldenstandsquote so weit gesunken, dass das Maastricht-Kriterium wieder eingehalten wird. Diese durch einen langanhaltenden wirtschaftlichen...

Large literatures have analyzed racial and ethnic disparities in economic outcomes and access to the safety net. For such analyses that rely on survey data, it is crucial that survey accuracy does not vary by race and ethnicity. Otherwise, the observed disparities may be confounded by...

This paper studies the secular increase in U.S. household debt and its relation to growing income inequality and financial fragility. We exploit a new household-level data set that covers the joint distributions of debt, income, and wealth in the United States over the past seven decades. The...

Analyzing unique data on loan applications by individuals who are majority owners of small firms, we detail how a bank's credit decisions affect their future income. We use the bank's cutoff rule, which is based on the applicants' credit scores, as the discontinuous locus providing exogenous...

This paper shows that rising top income shares affect job creation at firms of different sizes. High-income households save relatively more in stocks and bonds, and less in bank deposits. We propose that a higher income share of top earners therefore channels funds to large firms, but tightens...

Wealthier individuals have stronger incentives to seek higher returns. We investigate theoretically the effect this has on long-run wealth inequality. Incorporating capital management into a standard RamseyCass-Koopmans model generates substantial long-run inequality: the majority of the...