National housing markets differ in many aspects, making cross-national studies a fascinating subject. This article sheds light on housing demand in Germany and Japan. The primary task undertaken is to separate cross-national differences in the structure of housing demand by differing preferences...

The nested logit model has become an important tool for the empirical analysis of discrete outcomes. There is some confusion about its specification of the outcome probabilities. Two major variants show up in the literature. This paper compares both and finds that one of them (called random...

The paper considers transitions in the health and disability status of persons as they age. In particular, we explore the relationship between health and disability at younger ages (say 50) and health and disability in future ages. We consider for example, the future health path of persons who...

We discuss the development of predictive choice models that go beyond the random utility model in its narrowest formulation. Such approaches incorporate several elements of cognitive process that have been identified as important to the choice process, including strong dependence on history and...

Structural econometric methods that assume agents have rational expectations are often criticized. Yet, little is known about the relative costs and benefits of adopting alternative empirical strategies. This paper compares three procedures for inference about a single structural parameter using...

This paper investigates the influence of a firm's financial status on the within-firm allocation of funds, reflected in its plant-level investment and exit decisions. In the empirical analysis, financial status is measured by both standard measures and an indicator variable recently suggested by...

We analyze a model of life-cycle savings decisions which allows for both life-time and income uncertainty. We then simulate life-cycle saving rates based on empirical income processes estimated from West German household data. Our main findings are, first, that allowing for mortality risk...

An important issue in designing survey questions on household consumption is the level of aggregation of expenditure categories. In this paper, I present experimental evidence on biases that are related to the choice of expenditure categories. Comparing responses to a 'one shot' question with...

Germany has one of the most generous public pension and health insurance systems of the world, yet private savings are high until old age. Savings remain positive in old age, even for most low income households. How can we explain what we might want to term the 'German savings puzzle?' We...

Throughout the world, population aging is a major challenge that will continue well into the 21st century. While the patterns of the demographic transition are similar in most countries, timing differs substantially, in particular between industrialized and less developed countries. To the...