The Riester pensions in Germany provide helpful evidence to better understand the determinants of and the barriers to the demand for old-age provision products. The paper argues that families are of key importance in the decision making process to buy such a private pension. Families do not only...

Riester pensions are voluntary, but heavily subsidized private pension schemes in Germany. They were designed as a matching defined contribution scheme to fill the emerging "pension gap" that is being generated by the gradually declining generosity of the public pay-as-you-go pensions in...

This paper contributes to the debate on the adequate elicitation of individual risk attitudes in general socio-economic surveys. A multi-item question on the willingness to take risk, a very short form of the DOSPERT scale (Weber et al., 2002) and a series of lottery tasks are compared with...

The biological standard of living in Central Italy at the beginning of the 19th century is analyzed using newly collected data on the height of recruits in the army of the Papal States. The results reveal a decline in height for the cohorts born under French rule (1796–1815). Although this...

Zehn Jahre nach ihrer Einführung verbreitet sich die Riester-Rente weiterhin sehr dynamisch. Jedoch ist der Verbreitungsgrad in bestimmten Bevölkerungsgruppen noch relativ gering. Ein Grund dafür scheint zu sein, dass das Wissen über die Förderberechtigung und über die Förderhöhe noch...