We use a calibrated life-cycle model with earnings risk and liquidity constraints to study the role of tax-deferred retirement accounts (TDAs) in life cycle savings behavior. We find that they promote higher wealth accumulation but not higher net savings. Consumption increases mostly during...

We show that a life-cycle model with realistically calibrated uninsurable labor income risk and moderate risk aversion can simultaneously match stock market participation rates and asset allocation decisions conditional on participation. The key ingredients of the model are Epstein-Zin...

Motivated by the success of internal habit formation preferences in explaining asset pricing puzzles, we introduce these preferences in a life-cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice with liquidity constraints, undiversifiable labor income risk and stock-market participation costs. In...

We develop a model with incomplete markets and heterogeneous agents that generates a large equity premium, while simultaneously matching stock market participation and individual asset holdings. The high risk-premium is driven by incomplete risk sharing among stockholders, which results from the...

This paper is a quantitatively-oriented theoretical study into the interaction between housing prices, aggregate production, and household behavior over a lifetime. We develop a life-cycle model of a production economy in which land and capital are used to build residential and commercial real...

Using U.K. microeconomic data, we analyze the empirical determinants of voluntary annuity market demand. We find that annuity market participation increases with financial wealth, life expectancy and education and decreases with other pension income and a possible bequest motive for surviving...

This paper solves for optimal international portfolio choice in the presence of liquidity constraints and undiversifiable labor income risk. Optimal portfolios are internationally diversified while positive correlation between domestic stock market returns and permanent labor income shocks can...

This paper solves numerically for the optimal consumption and portfolio choice of a long-horizon investor facing short-sales and borrowing constraints, undiversifiable labor income risk and a predictable time varying equity premium. The investor pursues aggressive market timing strategies; a...

In this paper, we study the infinite-horizon model of household portfolio choice under liquidity constraints and revisit the portfolio specialization puzzle for impatient consumers with access to riskless and risky assets. We consider a labor income process that allows us to decompose the...

We study the infinite horizon model of household portfolio choice under liquidity constraints and revisit the portfolio specialization puzzle. We show why the puzzle is robust to several model variations, and argue that positive correlation between earnings shocks and stock returns is unlikely...