This paper presents results from the EU project “Transnational cooperation for the improvement of buildings energy performance and efficiency“(TRACE) which aims to provide a better understanding of reasoning behind scarce investments in energy efficiency in order to improve relevant...

Over the last decade or so, a substantial effort has gone into the design of a series of methodological investigations aimed at enhancing the quality of survey data on income and wealth. These investigations have largely been conducted at the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan,...

This paper details a new methodology developed to measure civil and political rights violations in a pilot sample of 13 diverse countries. In doing so, we discuss the problems present in previous attempts to measure civil and political rights cross-nationally and argue that our approach...

Over the last decade or so, a substantial effort has gone into the design of a series of methodological investigations aimed at enhancing the quality of survey data on income and wealth. These investigations have largely been conducted at the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan,...

This article models respondent behavior in a financial survey with a framework explicitly integrating a respondent's knowledge of and willingness to reveal his or her financial status. Whether a respondent provides a valid answer, a quot;don't knowquot;, or a quot;refusalquot; to a financial...

In traditional societies it is often argued that parents' desire for old age security in the form of transfers from their children provides an important motive for childbearing. Some doubt has been cast on this "old age security hypothesis" by recent estimates which suggest that the rate of...

The knowledge and reasoning ability needed to manage one's finances is a form of human capital. Alzheimer's disease and other dementias cause progressive declines in cognition that lead to a complete loss of functional capacities. In this paper we analyze the impact of information about...

This study analyzes the extent to which an individual's survival expectations influence his or her decision to claim social security benefits at an early age. We find that subjective survival probabilities capture meaningful behavioral responses to incentives for early Social Security claiming...

We have found modest effects of widowhood events on loss of health insurance. There are also modest effects of widowhood on labor supply, which we have not as yet attempted to attribute to insurance demand. Even new widowhood events, however, are not random with respect to initial conditions....