This paper uses new household survey data to study expectation formation during the recent housing boom in Germany. The cross section of forecasts depends on only two household characteristics: location and tenure. The average household in a region responds to local conditions but underpredicts...

This paper studies and documents household participation in voluntary individual retirement accounts (IRAs) in eleven European countries. Using recently available, internationally comparable data of households aged 50+, we calculate country-by-country average marginal effects of the probability...

We employ a life-cycle model with income risk to analyze how tax-deferred individual accounts affect households' savings for retirement. We consider voluntary accounts as opposed to mandatory accounts with minimum contribution rates. We contrast add-on accounts with carve-out accounts that...

We study the role of household saving behaviour, of individual motives for saving and that of perceived liquidity constraints in 15 Euro Area countries. The empirical analysis is based on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey, a new harmonized data set collecting detailed information on...

The Panel on Household Finances (PHF) is a new panel survey on household finances and wealth in Germany conducted by the Deutsche Bundesbank. It covers the balance sheets, pension claims, savings, incomes and work histories of households, together with some information on consumption patterns,...

This paper studies household financial choices in four euro area countries. The goal of the analysis is to understand the sources of the differences in these choices and their implications for the impact of monetary policy on consumption. The estimation of key parameters uses a simulated method...