The Barro-Becker model of fertility has three controversial predictions: (i) fertility and schooling are independent of family income; (ii) children are a net financial burden to society; and (iii) individual consumption is negatively associated to individual income. We show that introducing...

The Barro-Becker model of fertility has three controversial predictions: (i) fertility and schooling are independent of family income; (ii) children are a net financial burden to society; and (iii) individual consumption is negatively associated to individual income. We show that introducing...

We analytically show that a common across rich/poor individuals Stone-Geary utility function with subsistence consumption in the context of a simple two-asset portfolio-choice model is capable of qualitatively and quantitatively explaining: (i) the higher saving rates of the rich, (ii) the...

This paper gauges consumption and portfolio shares for aggregate assets (i.e. financial, tangible, and human assets) and disaggregated assets (i.e. deposits, stocks, and reserves for life insurance and pensions), rather than traditional underlying pricing implications for stocks. Hence, our...

Using Health and Retirement Study data and a structural econometric model, we exploit variation in employer matching rates in 401(k) plans to generate new estimates of the EIS: 0.74 in our richest specification, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.37-1.21.