This paper introduces the Vanguard Research Initiative (VRI), a new panel survey of wealthholders designed to yield high-quality measurements of a large sample of older Americans who arrive at retirement with significant financial assets. The VRI links survey data with a variety of...

The quot;annuity puzzlequot;, conveying the apparently low interest of retirees in longevity insurance, is central to household finance. One possible explanation for low annuitization is ``public care aversionquot; (PCA), retiree aversion to simultaneously running out of wealth and being in need...

Why do so few retirees purchase private annuities? Recent research suggests that bequest motives, precautionary savings motives, and actuarially-unfair pricing can explain the lack of demand for annuities. The degree to which these forces can explain the annuity puzzle depends crucially on...

Older wealthholders spend down assets slowly. To study this pattern, the paper introduces health dependent utility into a model in which different preferences for bequests, expenditures when in need of long-term care (LTC), and ordinary consumption combine with health and longevity uncertainty...

In the current structure of the U.S. residential mortgage market, a decrease in property values may make it very difficult for homeowners to refinance their mortgages to take advantage of declining interest rates. In this paper, we show that this form of collateral constraint has greatly reduced...

This paper quantifies the distributional costs of fiscal uncertainty in a neoclassical stochastic growth environment. We set up an incomplete-market model where heterogeneous households face uninsurable idiosyncratic risks in the processes of labor income and discount factor. Aggregate...

How significant are individual differences in self-control? Do these differences impact wealth accumulation? From where do they derive? Our survey-based measure of self-control provides insights into all three questions: 1.There are individual differences in self-control not only of a...

Prior research has established that consumption falls significantly at retirement. What is not known is the extent to which this fall is anticipated during the working years. Do working households expect such a large fall in consumption upon retirement, or are they taken by surprise? Using data...

Strong bequest motives can explain low retirement spending, but so equally can strong precautionary motives. Given this identification problem, the recent tradition has been largely to ignore bequest motives. We develop a rich model of spending in retirement that allows for both motives, and...

Prior research has established that consumption falls significantly at retirement. What is not known is the extent to which this fall is anticipated during the working years. Using data from a new survey, we show that many working households do expect a considerable fall in consumption when they...