2009 – Publication Years

Work Disability, Work, and Justification Bias in Europe and the U.S.

June 14, 2018
Disability, Health, International

To analyze the effect of health on work, many studies use a simple self-assessed health measure based upon a question such as “do you have an impairment or health problem limiting the kind or amount of work you can do?”…

How Ordinary Consumers Make Complex Economic Decisions: Financial Literacy and Retirement Readiness

June 14, 2018
Uncategorized

This paper reports on several self-assessed and objective measures of financial literacy newly added to the American Life Panel (ALP), and it links these performance measures to efforts consumers make to plan for retirement. We evaluate the causal relationship between…

Financial Literacy in Times of Turmoil and Retirement Insecurity

June 14, 2018
Uncategorized

Retirement in a Life Cycle Model of Labor Supply with Home Production

June 14, 2018
Labor Supply, Life-cycle model, Retirement

We analyze the forces that can generate retirement in different versions of standard life cycle models of labor supply. While nonconvexities in production can generate retirement, we show that the size of nonconvexities needed increases sharply as the intertemporal elasticity…

Extending Life Cycle Models of Optimal Portfolio Choice: Integrating Flexible Work, Endogenous Retirement, and Investment Decisions with Lifetime Payouts

June 14, 2018
Life-cycle model, Retirement

This paper derives optimal life cycle portfolio asset allocations as well as annuity purchases trajectories for a consumer who can select her hours of work and also her retirement age. Using a realistically-calibrated model with stochastic mortality and uncertain labor…

Social Security Rules and Labor Force Participation of Older Workers: Evidence from Chile

June 14, 2018
International, Labor force participation, Older workers, pensions, Social Security, Social Security reform

Recent research has argued that incentives stemming from social security systems influence the worker’s decision to retire. The experience of Chile, which radically changed its system in 1981, offers an opportunity to test this hypothesis. The new system tightened access…