The 1999 reforms to the Korea National Pension Scheme resulted in a unique situation, in which those who were insured by the pension scheme and those who were uninsured coexisted. Exploiting this situation, this paper evaluates the effect of public pension on private savings. The estimation results show that the average effect is close to zero. Households with low or very high saving rates were...

In this paper we study the role of habit formation in shaping the wealth distribution in an otherwise standard heterogeneous agents model economy with idiosyncratic uncertainty. We compare the inplications for precautionary savings and for wealth concentration between economies that only differ in the role played by habit formation. Once preferences are properly adjusted so that the Intertempor...

In this paper, we study the relationship between prevention and savings and analyze their socially optimal levels. In a first part, we analyze optimal decisions of primary prevention and savings when individuals face a health risk involving expenses that can not be covered by any insurance (private or public). We take into account the possibility for the individuals to underestimate or overesti...

We analyze a model of life-cycle savings decisions which allows for both lifetime and income uncertainty. We then simulate life-cycle saving rates based on empirical income processes estimated from West German household data. Our main ndings are, rst, that allowing for mortality risk improves the life-cycle model's predictions slightly, and second, that simulated saving rates still fail to matc...

This paper investigates the effects on labour supply, consumption and savings of a change in the superannuation tax structure, involving the taxation of contributions to a fund, pre-retirement earnings of the fund, and the benefits received from the fund during retirement. The effects on lifetime plans of tax changes are investigated using a simple three-period model in which the final period i...

According to a widely held belief, compulsory savings are justified on efficiency grounds because they alleviate the following free rider problem: if the welfare state grants a minimum income to older persons, some of the young may find it optimal not to provide for retirement. The literature argues that compulsory savings can be used in order to overcome this problem. However, potential free r...

Wayne Wickelgren, who died on November 2, 2005, after a long battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease, studied the time course of forgetting more assiduously and more effectively than anyone since Hermann Ebbinghaus. In a classic article, Wickelgren (1974) derived an equation that is remarkable in several respects, including in its ability to characterize the famous Ebbinghaus (1885/1913) savings funct...

The length of checking sequences for sequential machines can be considerably reduced if, instead of preset distinguishing sequences, one uses so-called "distinguishing sets" of sequences, which serve the same purpose but are generally shorter. The design of such a set turns out to be equivalent to the design of an adaptive distinguishing experiment, * though a checking sequence, using a disting...

The paper presents the research results related to the use of large utility-managed customer datasets for identifying customer trends and variations that may provide insights to the potential for energy efficiency opportunities. The emphasis is residential customers although the results can be applied to other sectors and building types. An approach to guide the statistical analysis and researc...

Preliminary —Please do not cite. We describe a forthcoming field experiment designed to test theories of time-inconsistency, namely a β − δ model of quasi-hyperbolic discounting. The experiment takes place within the context of a savings decision made by low-income tax filers. These tax filers are often offered the option to place their income tax refund in an illiquid savings vehicle at the ti...