In this paper I analyse the effect of a decrease in house prices on the savings of households. The life cycle model predicts that homeowners compensate an unexpected decrease in home equity by increasing their savings, and that the effect becomes stronger as the age of the household increases....

The theory of home production suggests substitutability between market consumption and home production. The current paper estimates the intratemporal elasticity between home production and market consumption from within-person variation. Shocks in houseprices induced by the Great Recession are...

There is a common perception that households are under-saving for retirement - indeed this has motivated many recent policy reforms in the UK. In this paper we use a structural model, specified to closely match the UK policy environment, to investigate this ‘fact' for the cohort born in the...

In this paper we present evidence from high-frequency data collections dedicated to tracking the effects of the financial crisis and great recession on American households. These data come from surveys that we conducted in the American Life Panel – an Internet survey run by RAND Labor and...

We use a confirmatory factor analysis to study the relation between the importance of a broad spectrum of saving motives, such as saving for retirement, and saving behavior. Survey data show that many respondents save for retirement in unconventional retirement accounts, such as investments in...

There is ample empirical evidence documenting widespread financial illiteracy and limited pension knowledge. At the same time, the distribution of wealth is widely dispersed and many workers arrive on the verge of retirement with few or no personal assets. In this paper, we investigate the...

We examined the mortgage interest tax relief (MIR) system in the Netherlands and reforms to this system, based on answers to direct questions in survey data for the period 2010-2012. As well as tracking individuals over time and at strategic moments in the process of the policy reform, this...

Survey data show that many respondents save for retirement in unconventional retirement accounts, such as investments in real estate. In countries where retirement savings are not mandatory for self-employed, representatives of this group often report this as an argument against making...

In 2000 Italy replaced its traditional system of severance pay for public employees with a new system. Under the old regime, severance pay was proportional to the final salary before retirement; under the new regime it is proportional to lifetime earnings. This reform entails substantial losses...

We quantified the relative importance of the precautionary motive in determining savings. Existing empirical evidence suggests that the impact of precautionary savings is small if one uses a subjective measure of uncertainty about next year income. However, other studies use an ‘objective'...