National saving rates differ enormously across developed countries. But these differences obscure a common trend, namely a dramatic decline over time. France and Italy, for example, saved over 17 percent of national income in 1970, but less than 7 percent in 2006. Japan saved 30 percent in 1970,...

The COVID-19 Early Release Scheme allowed Australian retirement plan participants in financial hardship immediate access to up to $A20,000 of their ‘preserved’ retirement savings, making otherwise illiquid balances temporarily liquid. Using administrative and survey data from a large...

Retirement saving is an area now jam-packed with defaults meant to address delayed or absent decision making. Yet, getting individuals engaged with retirement saving decisions is critical to avoid unsuitable one-size-fits-all defaults and optimise accumulated wealth. We apply a...

The COVID-19 Early Release Scheme allowed Australian retirement plan participants in financial hardship immediate access to up to $A20,000 of their ‘preserved’ retirement savings, making otherwise illiquid balances temporarily liquid. Using administrative and survey data from a large...

The implications of current balance information for retirement provision are considerably difficult to grasp or anticipate. We study how balance and/or income projections motivate the voluntary savings intentions of pension plan participants over a sequence of ten choices. To this effect, we...

This paper develops a dynamic structural life-cycle model to study how heterogeneous health and medical spending shocks affect the savings behavior of the elderly. Individuals are allowed to respond to health shocks in two ways: they can directly pay for their health care expenses (self-insure)...