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I show that after accounting for predictable variation arising from movements in real interest rates, preferences and income shocks, liquidity constraints and measurement errors, volatility of household consumption in the US increased by 25 percent between 1970 and 2004. The increase was lower than that of volatility of family income. Nonwhite and those with less than 13 years of education, for whom there was no differential increase in income volatility, experienced a significantly larger increase in volatility of household consumption. Substantial differences in wealth and access to credit markets point to the main reason for this divide. JEL: D12, D14, E21, J15

There is continuing controversy over the importance of credit constraints. This paper investigates whether total household expenditure and debt is affected by an exogenous increase in access to credit provided by a credit market reform that enabled Danish house owners to use housing equity as collateral for consumption loans. We find that the magnitude of the response is correlated with the amount of equity released by the reform and that the effect is strongest for younger households. Even for this group, the response was moderate. The aggregate effect of the reform was significant but small. (JEL D14, D91, E21)

Elderly households hold most of their wealth in housing, maintain high levels of wealth throughout retirement, and often leave bequests. The value of their houses are subject to large shocks. To what extent do these shocks affect their savings, consumption, and bequests? Answering this question requires separating precautionary savings, bequest motives, and the desire to remain in one's home. I develop and estimate a structural model of retirement savings decisions with realistic risks, housing, and heterogeneity in bequest preferences. I exploit policy changes to the taxation of housing and bequests to separately identify the different motives for holding wealth. Estimates show approximately half of retirees have no bequest motive. House price changes are quantitatively important, with 1/4 of increases passed on to future generations. I use the estimated model to evaluate means-tested programs insuring retirees' LTC expenses. I find exemptions providing marginal liquidity have larger insurance value than fully eliminating LTC expense risk per pound it costs the government.

Although natural hazard insurance is advocated as an important means of risk management, private insurance demand often remains below critical levels. Prior loss experience and the design of governmental relief schemes are two factors potentially influencing insurance decisions. We address these two elements in monetary incentivized experiments which include representations of natural hazard insurance schemes in Europe. We draw on two very different samples: First, we run a laboratory experiment with a student subject pool in Germany. In addition, we replicate the experiment as an online experiment with citizens of flood-prone areas in the city of Dornbirn (Austria). The experiment reflects two possible designs of governmental relief schemes: partial but guaranteed relief and full but nonguaranteed relief. The risk of loss is kept constant over ten consecutive rounds to analyze the effect of loss experience. In both of our samples, the design of the governmental relief scheme has no effect on insurance decisions. Furthermore, prior loss experience adversely affects insurance decisions. Uninsured subjects tend to remain uninsured after experiencing a loss, and previously insured subjects often switch to non-insurance in the rounds after the loss. These results have important policy implications, e.g., for the optimal design of flood risk communication.

Die Bundesregierung hat in ihrem Koalitionsvertrag die Verbesserung der privaten Altersvorsorge durch die Einführung eines "attraktiven standardisierten Riester-Produkts" angekündigt. Der vorliegende Beitrag argumentiert, dass nur ein flexibles, aber öffentlich-rechtlich organisiertes Standardprodukt geeignet ist, das bisherige Marktversagen bei Angeboten zur privaten Zusatzvorsorge zu korrigieren. Als zentrale Anforderungen an die Ausgestaltung eines Standardprodukts werden eine staatsferne Durchführung der operativen Aufgaben, möglichst geringe Kosten sowie Flexibilität bei Ein- und Auszahlung definiert. Von entscheidender Bedeutung ist darüber hinaus, dass Verbraucher zu jedem Zeitpunkt privatrechtliche Ansprüche gegen den öffentlich-rechtlichen Träger des Standardprodukts haben. ; In its coalition agreement the federal government announced the intention to improve private supplementary pensions by introducing an "attractive standardized Riester-Product". This article argues that a flexible, standardized product, organized by a public provider, is the only viable option to correct the market failure currently afflicting private supplementary pensions. A private execution of duties, minimal costs and high flexibility in contributions and payouts are defined as essential conditions for the implementation of this standardized product. Furthermore, it is essential that consumers have civil law claims against the public provider of the product at all times.

This paper develops a three-period overlapping-generations model where middle-aged agents care about not only their own lifetime utility but also their old parents' and children's well-being. The double altruistic agents choose amounts of intergenerational transfers to their old parents and children as well as private savings. The government specifies amounts of public transfers from working adults to the dependents. The model also takes the effects of demographic transition on the burdens of supporting elders and children into account. Using the 14 countries' data from the National Transfer Accounts (NTA), we estimate the degrees of filial and parental altruism and adjust them with their respective life expectancy and fertility rates. The findings suggest that the developed countries are more filially altruistic than the developing ones while the latter are more parentally altruistic than the former. Especially, people in developing Asia have notably lower adjusted degrees of filial altruism than those in the other countries. Our welfare analyses reveal that the developing Asian countries must introduce more comprehensive public welfare programs for the elderly in order to maximize social welfare. Moreover, their low adjusted degrees of filial altruism will trap the developing Asian countries at the current low levels of public old-age supports and social welfare as further demographic transition ensues.

This study examines the relationship between financial literacy and political orientation in Great Britain. Using novel data from the British Election Survey in 2014, we employ two distinct measures of political orientation, capturing individual self-assessment on a left-right axis and party preferences. We find that financially-literate individuals are some 11-19 percent more likely to orientate at the centre-left or the centre-right. Moreover, they are some 30 percent less likely not to know their political orientation. The results are robust when rich sets of public-attitude and public-value variables are accounted for. Financially-literate individuals are also more likely to have a stable political orientation over time and they are some 15-23 percent less likely to change attitudes radically towards the left or the right across different waves of the study. We interpret our findings as indicative that greater financial literacy is conducive to greater stability of moderate political views and orientation.

China's central government has rightfully recognized that successful urbanization will be decisive for the nation's future development. However, most city regions in China are not yet enjoying the net benefits that agglomerations in metropolitan regions can initiate. In this regard, following the latest discussions around the necessity of inclusive urban growth in China, the paper calls for a housing strategy that accommodates the surging waves of rural to urban migration, one of the main drivers of urbanization, and that provides migrants with greater urban socio-economic opportunities, improves migrants' urban prospects in order to facilitate a growing urban middle class as well as directing urban growth. Therefore, migrants' characteristics and their exposure to the immediate urban socio-economic environment are elaborated upon in order to understand migrants' housing priorities along their rural to urban transition. These housing priorities are the result of coping strategies in the face of distinctive urban opportunities and threats. In the context of migration, they form the underlying forces of housing demand development along the rural to urban transition. Eventually, when identified, these forces can be triggered in a way that enables urban growth to contribute to agglomeration benefits. This paper adds to the previous IPE working paper: "Urbanization in China and how urban housing demand can be met", by specifying the underlying forces of evolving migrant housing demands.

This paper examines the extent to which savings products offered by cooperative societies in some parts of Nigeria meet the financial needs of the rural dwellers. The study used the data from interviews and focus group discussions from randomly selected members of cooperative societies in six local governments. The data are analyzed using percentages, content analysis and quotation. The study found that the savings product helps to inculcate a good savings habit among the participants because they find it easier to save now than when they were introduced to the program. The members also developed self esteem as -part owners- of the program because of the compulsory savings that they participate in, and they do not want the program to collapse. Members are also satisfied because they are able to save in the scheme which helps them to reduce their expenses on frivolous spending such as leisure drinking and acquisition of more wives. The members' inability to withdraw from their savings when in financial need, except on cessation of membership, was found as the drawback of the program.

L'article analyse une évolution récente du programme de transferts sociaux, Prospera au Mexique. Le gouvernement mexicain tente de lier ces aides à des produits financiers (crédit, épargne) pour les bénéficiaires. Justifié comme une question technique dans un souci de meilleure efficacité, nous montrons que ce passage s'accompagne de transformations profondes à la fois des acteurs impliqués dans la mise en œuvre de cette nouvelle génération de programmes sociaux financiarisés et d'injonctions contradictoires qui cadrent l'usage des transferts monétaires. Ainsi, monnaie à usage social et monnaie vouée à produire des dettes financières ne s'avèrent pas naturellement convertibles. Classification JEL : D14 ; O16 ; O38

We study how individuals repay their debt using linked data on multiple credit cards. Repayments are not allocated to the higher interest rate card, which would minimize the cost of borrowing. Moreover, the degree of misallocation is invariant to the economic stakes, which is inconsistent with optimization frictions. Instead, we show that repayments are consistent with a balance-matching heuristic under which the share of repayments on each card is matched to the share of balances on each card. Balance matching captures more than half of the predictable variation in repayments and is highly persistent within individuals over time. (JEL D14, D15, D91, G41)

Workers with 401(k)s and similar defined contribution pensions adjust contributions facing large fluctuations in personal finances. Using administrative tax records linked to the Health and Retirement Study, this paper shows that adjustments differ for contributors who are aware and unaware of their pension coverage. Unaware contributors are more likely to stop contributing facing deteriorating finances, but adjust contributions similarly along the intensive margin. For example, 25% of unaware contributors stop contributing facing earnings declines, but only 15% of aware contributors do so. These findings have implications for policies like automatic enrollment and information campaigns that encourage retirement savings. (JEL D14, J14, J32, D83)

Despite facing significant uncertainty about their lifespans and health care costs, most retirees do not buy annuities or long-term care insurance. In this paper, I find that retirees' saving and insurance choices are highly inconsistent with standard life-cycle models in which people care only about their own consumption but match well models in which bequests are luxury goods. Bequest motives tend to reduce the value of insurance by reducing the opportunity cost of precautionary saving. The results suggest that bequest motives significantly increase saving and significantly decrease purchases of long-term care insurance and annuities. (JEL D14, D15, D64, G22, H55, J26)

Policy uncertainty reduces individual welfare when individuals have limited opportunities to mitigate or insure against the resulting consumption fluctuations. We field an original survey to measure the degree of perceived policy uncertainty in Social Security benefits and to estimate the impact of this uncertainty on individual welfare. Our central estimates show that on average individuals are willing to forgo 6 percent of the benefits they are supposed to get under current law to remove the policy uncertainty associated with their future Social Security benefits. This translates to a risk premium from policy uncertainty equal to 10 percent of expected benefits. (JEL D14, D81, H55)

This paper studies the impact of unemployment insurance (UI) on the housing market. Exploiting heterogeneity in UI generosity across US states and over time, we find that UI helps the unemployed avoid mortgage default. We estimate that UI expansions during the Great Recession prevented more than 1.3 million foreclosures and insulated home values from labor market shocks. The results suggest that policies that make mortgages more affordable can reduce foreclosures even when borrowers are severely underwater. An optimal UI policy during housing downturns would weigh, among other benefits and costs, the deadweight losses avoided from preventing mortgage defaults. (JEL D14, E32, G21, J65, R31)