, intertemporal lifecycle consumption optimization problem and the effect of revealing social information on past average consumption … in solving for the optimal consumption path. Instead, we find that the provision of social information on past average … levels of consumption results in a greater deviation of consumption from both the unconditional and the conditionally optimal …

We investigate the effect of positional goods (goods for which one's consumption relative to others’ matters) on saving …, based on results from a life-cycle consumption/saving experiment. In a Group treatment, we allow inter-personal comparisons … by assigning subjects to groups and displaying rankings based partly on consumption. A baseline Individual treatment is …

pecuniary externalities. Absent institutional constraints like prices and budgets, the optimal consumption rule would have … annuitize, the growth rate of marginal utility will be the discount rate minus the interest rate, resulting in a consumption … profile that is too flat. Accidental bequests transfer wealth from the old to the young, steepening the consumption profile …

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 household consumption. When controlling for own income as well as unobserved … individual and local area heterogeneity, a 1% increase in reference consumption leads households to raise own consumption by …

Many households have insufficient savings to handle moderate and routine consumption shocks. Many of these financially …

homeless individuals staying at a transitional shelter. When monetary prizes were offered for achieving the highest saving …