2003
UM03-S2: Jr Scholar Research: “Testing for Adverse Selection in South African Annuitant Data”
This paper develops an equilibrium model of the annuities market where agents have private information about their mortality, and where the accuracy of this information decays over time. The paper shows that in this case, insurance companies will observe a…
2002
UM02-01: The Annuity Puzzle Revisited: Implications for Social Security Reform
There is a pressing need for a better understanding of how access to various types of financial products can impact retirement behavior, especially if this access comes from a change in the incentive scheme through a reform of the current…
UM02-02: Using the Health and Retirement Study to Simulate the Effects of Voluntary and Mandatory Systems of Social Security Privatization
Abstract from first paper: The President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security suggests three plans for reforming Social Security. These plans divert various amounts of the payroll tax to a personal account if the worker chooses to participate in the account.…
UM02-03: Endogenous Labor Supply Responses to Social Security Reform
Economists’ most basic model for studying Social Security policy issues is the so—called life—cycle model of saving behavior. This paper sets up a life—cycle model in which a household simultaneously chooses its lifetime consumption profile and retirement age. The paper…
UM02-04: Subjective Probability Distributions and the Decision to Save
We develop a model of portfolio selection with subjective uncertainty and learning in order to explain why some people hold stocks while others don’t. We model heterogeneity in information directly, which is an alternative to the existing explanations that emphasized…
UM02-05: Saving for Retirement: Wage Growth and Unexpected Events
We found that there is a perception of ‘under-saving’ for retirement among many individuals. Individuals who perceive they have saved inadequately attribute this mainly to having insufficient income. Under a lifecycle model of consumption with a known income path this…
UM02-06: A Structural Model of the Family that Jointly Explains Retirement and Saving Behavior, with Analyses of the Effects of Current and Proposed Social Security Policies In A Family Context
We use this model to simulate the retirement effects of a system of personal accounts based on a 10.6 percent contribution rate over the lifetime. One version allows individuals to make lump sum withdrawals at retirement instead of annuitizing. This…
UM02-07: Early Retirement Windows Year 2
An analysis of those who accepted window offers shows a sharp decline in employment and hours worked, earnings per hour, and annual earnings immediately following the accepted offer. Transitions to self-employment are more common among window acceptors than other workers.…
UM02-08: Understanding Poverty Among Elderly Divorced Women
Until recent years, very few elderly people had ever experienced divorce. Most had been married to one person their entire adult lives. This pattern is changing rapidly. The sharp rise in divorce between 1965 and 1975, with persistently high rates…
UM02-09: How Important are Wages to the Elderly?
More than 40 percent of Social Security beneficiaries continue to work after age 65. This research investigates the extent to which these individuals substitute labor across periods in response to anticipated wage changes induced by the Social Security earnings test.…