Standard homo economicus lives in a world of complete markets and maximizes utility which
is a function of his personal consumption. This approximation cannot account for parents …

As the workhorse of consumption and saving research for the past four decades, the life-
cycle model has proved flexible and useful for examining a variety of questions. In a classic …

A growing body of evidence indicates that liquidity constraints could affect a substantial
proportion of US consumers, but little is known about why these constraints might exist. An …

Although the theoretical importance of expectations in decision-making is well known to
economists, only a few empirical papers investigate the impact of individual subjective …

If an individual falls on hard times, can he rely on his family for financial support? In view of
proposed reductions in public assistance programs, it is important to understand the …

Most models of family transfers consider only two generations and focus on two motives:
altruism and exchange. They also assume perfect substitution between inter vivos financial …

Theoretical literature shows that income uncertainty boosts saving, yet empirical work is
incomplete. I test for the precautionary motive for saving using panel data. Knowing this …

Abstract 5,132 readers of the German weekly, Die Zeit, participated in a three‐person
bargaining experiment. In our data analysis we focus on (1) the influence of age, gender …

This paper investigates the role in household wealth accumulation of saving for bequests. It
employs data from a 1988 survey of TIAA-CREF annuitants designed to measure pension …

This paper provides new evidence on how wealth shocks influence retirement behavior.
Economic theory generally posits that leisure is a normal good, yet it is difficult to obtain …