This paper investigates the roles psychological biases play in empirically estimated deviations between subjective survival beliefs (SSBs) and objective survival probabilities (OSPs). We model deviations between SSBs and OSPs through age-dependent inverse S-shaped probability weighting functions...

On average, "young" people underestimate whereas "old" people overestimate their chances to survive into the future. We adopt a Bayesian learning model of ambiguous survival beliefs which replicates these patterns. The model is embedded within a non-expected utility model of life-cycle...

We consider a class of additively time-separable life-cycle consumption-savings models with iso-elastic per period power utility featuring resistance to inter-temporal substitution of θ with linear consumption policy functions. The utility maximization problem is dynamically inconsistent for...

This paper develops a theoretical model for the formation of subjective beliefs on individual survival expectations. Data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) indicate that, on average, young respondents underestimate their true survival probability whereas old respondents overestimate...

Psychological evidence suggests that people's learning behavior is often prone to a 'myside bias' or 'irrational belief persistence' in contrast to learning behavior exclusively based on objective data. In the context of Bayesian learning such a bias may result in diverging posterior beliefs and...