Author: Mariela Dal BorgoPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Essays in Household Savings and Portfolio Choice
Author: Mariela Dal BorgoHousehold Savings and Portfolio Choice
Author: Sean Patrick KleinPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 140
Book Description
This thesis consists of three essays that examine household savings and portfolio choice behavior. Chapter One analyses the effects of employer matching contributions and tax incentives on participation and contribution behavior in employer-sponsored 401(k) savings plans. Employer sponsored retirement savings plans consist of several different incentives designed to increase employee savings, including matching contributions, tax deductibility, and tax free compounding. There is a substantial literature on the effects of match rates on retirement savings, but little on the effects of preferential tax treatment. This chapter provides estimates of the impact of employer matching and tax deductibility on retirement savings using a uniquely suited dataset from a large United States Corporation. I estimate that the effect of a one percentage point change in the match rate corresponds to a 0.06 percentage point increase in savings plan participation rates, while a similar one percentage point increase in marginal tax rates increases participation by 1.35 percentage points. Changes in the match rate have an insignificant effect on contribution rates (conditional on participation), though a one percentage point change in marginal tax rates tends to increase contribution rates by 0.16 percentage points. The effects of the match rate and marginal tax rate are transformed into changes in the annualized rate of return of the savings plan and this disparity remains.
Three Essays on Household Portfolio Choice
Author: Tae-Young PakPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Book Description
This dissertation considers household portfolio choice at the end of life-cycle. Three essays examine the importance of uncertainty about medical expenditure risk, cognitive aging, and subjective life horizon, and their role in explaining late-life savings decisions and portfolio allocation. Chapter 2 of the dissertation, entitled "Medical expenditure risk and precautionary saving: Evidence from Medicare Part D", tests the presence of precautionary saving motive to cope with medical expenditure risk. By examining Medicare Part D and it's association with household saving, I demonstrate that social insurance programs discourage private saving by reducing health-related uncertainty. Chapter 3 of the dissertation, entitled "Econometric analysis of cognitive abilities and portfolio choice", explores the role of cognitive aging in explaining a portfolio rebalancing towards safer assets at the end of life-cycle. In this essay, I argue that a gradual decrease in risky asset ownership at the end of life-cycle is in part driven by losing cognitive capabilities. I pay particular attention to testing whether such association is observed only on the extensive margin - that is, changes in ownership, or both risky asset ownership and reallocation across the intensive margin are affected. Causality is tested by exploiting exogenous variation in cognitive health, created by the introduction of Medicare Part D in 2006. Chapter 4 of the dissertation, entitled "Subjective life expectancy and portfolio choice: A household bargaining approach", examines collective decision-making when spouses have an incentive to bargain over portfolio allocation. This article starts with two well-known facts: (a) difference in life expectancy between husband and wife; and (b) age disparity in marriage. These two facts imply that females, on average, face 5 or 6 years longer retirement period to finance, and thus have more incentive to hold risky assets to achieve higher expected capital gains in the long-term. A difference in life expectancy then creates an incentive to bargain over how to allocate savings to risky and non-risky assets. The estimation results indeed show that more financial wealth is allocated to risky assets when a spouse with longer life expectancy has the "final say."
ESSAYS ON PORTFOLIO CHOICE AND HEALTH OVER THE LIFE CYCLE
Author: You DuPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 97
Book Description
This dissertation examines the effect of health and its associated variables on households' consumption and portfolio choices over life cycle. The first two essays constitute my job market paper, which explains why the risky portfolio share rises in wealth from two health mechanisms: endogenous health investment and medical expenditure risk. The third chapter explores the effect of health and health risk on households' optimal consumption and portfolio decisions over life cycle. Chapter 1 titled ``PORTFOLIO CHOICE AND HEALTH ACROSS WEALTH: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE" illustrates the empirical relationship between the portfolio puzzle and the heterogeneity of health variables across wealth. Classic financial theory suggests that under the assumption of no borrowing constraints and no mean-reverting stock returns, households should hold a constant risky portfolio in spite of their wealth, ages and life horizons (Samuelson (1969) and Merton (1969, 1971)). Yet data from the Survey of Consumers Finances (SCF) show that the risky portfolio share of financial assets increases in wealth. In the literature, this is called the ``portfolio puzzle". Meanwhile, various sources of data indicate that, compared with the non-wealthy households, the wealthy people have better health, longer life horizon, higher out of pocket medical spending with lower uncertainty, and more health care time. All these facts suggest a novel correlation between the portfolio puzzle and the heterogeneity of health variables across wealth and provide a robust empirical foundation to explain the portfolio puzzle from a health perspective. In Chapter 2 titled ``A LIFE CYCLE MODEL OF PORTFOLIO CHOICE AND HEALTH", a life cycle model with endogenous health investment and medical expenditure risk is proposed to capture the key empirical features in the first chapter. This calibrated model remarkably matches the U.S. data. I find that endogenous health investment is essential to explain the portfolio puzzle: if health is exogenous without investment, the model can only could deliver 7.2% of the risky share gap across wealth. Medical expenditure risk is less important and has a larger effect on the non-wealthy group. If I abstract from medical expenditure risk, the risky shares increase for both groups: 24% for the low wealth group and 5% for the wealthy group. This life cycle model provides new insights into how health affects households' financial behavior. Chapter 3 titled ``OPTIMAL CONSUMPTION AND PORTFOLIO CHOICE WITH HEALTH RISK" investigates the effect of health and health risk on households' optimal consumption and portfolio allocations over the life cycle. The simulation results show that consumption, savings in bonds, and savings in stocks all increase with health. The risky portfolio share, which is the ratio of savings in stocks to the total financial assets, demonstrates the same tendency for both health states over the life cycle: at the very young age, the risky portfolio share is relatively high. Starting from the middle age, this share falls significantly and keeps steady until the end of life. For most of the lifetime, the risky portfolio share is positively related with health. These results emphasize the importance of health and its associated risk in consumption and portfolio decisions.
Essays in Optimal Consumption and Portfolio Choice
Author: Jialun LiThree Essays on Household Saving and Wealth
Author: Kyeongwon YooPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Households
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
Essays in the Economics of Retirement Income Security and Household Decision-making
Author: Saku P. AuraPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 182
Book Description
The first essay of this thesis studies within-family decision making regarding investment in income protection for surviving spouses using a simple and tractable Nash-bargaining model. A change in US pension law (the Retirement Equity Act of 1984) is used as an instrument to derive predictions from the bargaining model and to contrast these with the predictions of the classical single-utility-function model of the household. In the empirical part of the essay, the predictions of the classical model are rejected in favor of the predictions of the Nash-bargaining model. Second essay studies married couple's dynamic investment and consumption choices under the assumption that the couple cannot commit across time to not to renegotiate their decisions. The inefficiencies that can arise are characterized. Efficiency properties of different divorce asset division regimes are examined. The effect of inability to commit across time on the savings level is examined under a tractable special case of the model. Third essay is coauthored with Professor Peter Diamond and Professor John Geanakoplos. In this essay we extend Arrow's analysis of portfolio choice in a one-period model to savings and portfolio choice in a two-period model.
Author: 
Author: 
Author: Anne-Marie Pålsson