We estimate the effect of grant aid on poor college students' attainment and earnings using student-level administrative data from four-year public colleges in Texas. To identify these effects, we exploit a discontinuity in grant generosity as a function of family income. Eligibility for the...

This paper brings together the academic literature on individual and institutional investors in order to understand the nature of difficulties faced by them and set the background for the Special Issue. This introductory article and the papers in the Special Issue contribute to the debate on how...

This paper offers new empirical evidence on the marginal propensity to consume out of an unanticipated liquidity shock. A Danish 2012 policy reform reduced the incentive to retire early in order to increase labour supply but at the same time the policy released a substantial amount of savings...

In the presence of persistent inter-industry wage differentials, the value of portfolio choice varies across otherwise identical households employed in different industries. Leaving the data generating process of industry-specific earnings unspecified, I solve a dynamic portfolio choice model...

Defaults have been shown to have a powerful effect on retirement saving behavior yet there is limited research on who is most affected by defaults and whether this varies based on features of the choice environment. Using administrative data on employer-sponsored retirement accounts linked to...

Why do household saving rates differ so much across countries? This micro-level question has global implications: countries that systematically “oversave” export capital by running current account surpluses. In the recipient countries, interest rates are thus too low and financial stability...

This study estimates the extent to which a policy-induced increase in distributions at retirement crowds out dissaving from taxable assets. This parameter informs the policy effectiveness of the underlying policy and sheds light on how retirees manage the decumulation of their assets. In...

We provide a microeconomic analysis of the incentive and welfare effects of idiosyncratic return risk. While most of the existing literature has focused on risky returns as an aggregate shock, we allow for correlation between returns and the agent's non-financial endowment. Using a simple...

3.6 million more older American households have a mortgage than 2000, contributing to an increase in mortgage usage among the elderly of thirty-nine percent. Rather than collecting imputed rent, older households are borrowing against home equity, potentially with loan terms that exceed their...

This paper uses an administrative panel dataset to examine Swedish households' socially responsible investing (SRI) in mutual funds. We zoom in on the differences between all and wealthy households because of the wealthy households' importance for the economy. Surprisingly, wealthy households...