Using data from the Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals, this paper describes the shape of consumption profiles over the month for Social Security benefit recipients. Individuals with income mostly made up of Social Security benefits and who have some savings smooth consumption over...

The standard life-cycle portfolio choice model assumes that all agents invest in a diversified stock market index. In contrast recent empirical evidence, summarized in Campbell (2006) suggests that households' financial portfolios are under-diversified and that there is substantial heterogeneity...

The dramatic rise in the disability insurance (DI) roles in the last 20 years has been the subject of much controversy in both popular and academic circles. While, the relationship between DI and labor force participation has been the subject of a growing literature, the mechanism of this...

In Italia, nonostante le recenti riforme, lo sviluppo dei fondi pensione rimane insoddisfacente, limitando il risparmio previdenziale dei lavoratori e l’articolazione del mercato privato dei capitali. Questo studio esamina i motivi alla base di questo ritardo, analizza i possibili vantaggi che...

Individuals are increasingly in charge of their own financial security after retirement. But how well-equipped are individuals to make saving decisions; do they possess adequate financial literacy, are they informed about the most important components of saving plans, do they even plan for...

This paper aims at detecting whether Italian households exhibit excess sensitivity in their consumption with regard to “severance pay”, a sizable, expected lump sum that workers receive at either retirement or whenever they leave their job for whatever reason. One of the implications of the...

Stochastic mortality, i.e. modelling death arrival via a jump process with stochastic intensity, is gaining increasing reputation as a way to represent mortality risk. This paper represents a first attempt to model the mortality risk of couples of individuals, according to the stochastic...

This paper provides an estimation of the effects of the introduction of a mandatory funded pillar on households’ savings. To this purpose, I exploit the 2002 Russian pension reform that introduced a funded component along the pay-as-you-go one. The empirical evidence shows that the...

Beneficiaries of Social Security face restrictions on how much they can earn without incurring the earnings test (ET). In 2000, President Clinton eliminated the ET between age 65 and 70. In this paper I evaluate how this removal impacts the long-term finances of the Trust Fund. I find that...