Some countries have the resources and capacity to save more than the other countries. This paper analyses the determinants of annual saving. The analysis uses the optimal saving function which is derived from the household inter-temporal utility maximisation. The predictions from the comparative...

Most simulated micro-founded macro models use solely consumer-demand aggregates in order to estimate deep economy-wide preference parameters, which are useful for policy eva- luation. The underlying demand-aggregation properties that this approach requires, should be easy to empirically...

This paper incorporates two empirically-grounded insights into a dynamic life cycle portfolio choice model: the fact that investors forego the opportunity to accumulate job-specific skills when they spend time managing their own money, and the observation that efficiency in financial decision...

This paper presents a nonparametric analysis of a common class of intertemporal models of consumer choice that relax consumption independence. Within this class and in the absence of any functional form restrictions on instantaneous preferences, we compare the revealed preference conditions for...

Modern macroeconomics empirically addresses economy-wide incentives behind economic actions by using insights from the way a single representative household would behave. This analytical approach requires that incentives of the poor and the rich are strictly aligned. In empirical analysis a...

Most simulated micro-founded macro models use solely consumer-demand aggregates in order to estimate deep economy-wide preference parameters, which are useful for policy evaluation. The underlying demand-aggregation properties that this approach requires, should be easy to empirically disprove:...

We demonstrate that upward-looking comparisons induce “keeping up with the richer Joneses”-behaviour. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we estimate the effect of reference consumption, defined as the consumption level of all households who are perceived to be richer, on...

This paper investigates consumption behavior within an intertemporal optimization model of the representative household. Our dataset consists of deposits and withdrawals from individual household checking accounts that received paychecks by direct deposit. We construct samples of panel data for...

We investigate how households in temporarily straitened circumstances due to an unemployment spell cut back on expenditures and how they spend marginal dollars of unemployment insurance (UI) benefit. Our theoretical and empirical analyses emphasize the importance of allowing for the fact that...

In this paper, we examine the effect of observed and unobserved heterogeneity in the desire to die with positive net worth. Using a structural life-cycle model nested in a switching regression with unknown sample separation, we find that roughly three-fourths of the elderly single population has...