Economists' principal tool for studying household behavioral responses to changes in tax and other government policies, and the magnitude and determinants of private saving, is the life-cycle model. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to incorporate into that model one of the most...

This study seeks to quantify determinants, and costs, of the labor-force participation of married women. We use demographic and earnings data from the Health and Retirement Study. The earnings data constitute an unusually long panel but have the defect of lacking corresponding reports on work...

Economists have long thought of technological progress as a primary determinant of rising living standards over time. One might think of technological progress as increasing the "effectiveness" of labor, thereby raising the amount of output that each unit of labor can produce. The purpose of...

Economists’ standard model assumes that improvements in total factor productivity (TFP) raise the marginal product of labor for all workers evenly. This paper uses an earnings dynamics regression model to study whether, in practice, older workers benefit less from TFP growth than younger...

Long-term interest rates have been falling globally since the early 1980s and have reached historically low levels. Past forecasts largely missed this secular decline. This paper reviews methodologies for making long-term interest rate projections. We synthesize results from studies that use...

This paper develops a new measure of after-tax rate of return on aggregate wealth and uses it in estimating the structural relationship between the long-run interest rate and productivity growth rate. The structural approach allows use of parameter estimates in constructing projections for the...

We analyze lifetime earnings histories of white males during 1960-2010 and categorize the labor force status of every worker as either working full-time, partially retired or fully retired. We find that the fraction of partially retired workers has risen dramatically (from virtually zero to 15...

This paper analyzes the effect of a potential reform to the Social Security system on individuals' retirement and consumption choices. We first estimate the coefficients for a life-cycle model. We assume intratemporally nonseparable preference orderings and endogenous retirement. Our framework...

Using pseudo-panel data, we estimate the structural parameters of a life-cycle consumption model with discrete labor supply choice. A focus of our analysis is the abrupt drop in consumption upon retirement for a typical household. The literature sometimes refers to the drop, which in the U.S....

This paper studies the quantitative importance of precautionary wealth accumulation relative to life-cycle saving for retirement. Section 1 examines panel data on earnings from the PSID. Using a bivariate normal model of random effects, we find that second-period-of-life earnings are strongly...