Over the last decade or so, a substantial effort has gone into the design of a series of methodological investigations aimed at enhancing the quality of survey data on income and wealth. These investigations have largely been conducted at the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan,...

A characteristic feature of survey data on household wealth is the high incidence of missing data—roughly one in three respondents who report owning an asset are unable or unwilling to provide an estimate of the exact amount of their holding. A partial solution to that problem is to devise a...

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This paper investigates sample attrition in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We compare attrition behavior in two of the HRS cohorts: original HRS cohort and AHEAD cohort. We distinguish attrition due to death (passive attrition) from attrition due to other causes (active attrition),...

Focusing on the interconnections between the Basel regulatory capital formula and several well-specified statistical models, this working paper seeks to understand some of the important issues embedded in the Basel Accord. These include: Where does this formula come from? What risks does it try...

Second home equity is an important component of both housing equity and net worth for the old population. It has been covered, implicitly or explicitly, across all waves of HRS and AHEAD surveys. But due to a skip-pattern error, not all households with second homes were asked detailed questions...

Research on time and financial transfers is often conducted along two distinct lines—transfers within the family and transfers beyond the family—without considering the fact that the two types of transfers are actually interrelated. Using longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement...

Over the last decade or so, a substantial effort has gone into the design of a series of methodological investigations aimed at enhancing the quality of survey data on income and wealth. These investigations have largely been conducted at the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan,...

This article models respondent behavior in a financial survey with a framework explicitly integrating a respondent’s knowledge of and willingness to reveal his or her financial status. Whether a respondent provides a valid answer, a “don’t know”, or a “refusal” to a financial...