IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eecrev/v119y2019icp42-54.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assisted savings for retirement: An experimental analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Bohr, Clement E.
  • Holt, Charles A.
  • Schubert, Alexandra V.

Abstract

This paper evaluates the benefit of a basic retirement savings program. It considers a life-cycle experiment with interest paid on a safe asset and returns on a risky asset that induce a stationary fundamental value. The private savings treatment provides an income stream that terminates at retirement. Observed consumption starts too high and finishes low in later periods. The assisted savings treatment smooths income over all periods, which dampens asset price bubbles and improves consumption profiles. This improvement persists in treatments done without asset trading, but disappears with sharply reduced interest rates that simplify present value considerations.

Suggested Citation

  • Bohr, Clement E. & Holt, Charles A. & Schubert, Alexandra V., 2019. "Assisted savings for retirement: An experimental analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 42-54.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:119:y:2019:i:c:p:42-54
    DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2019.05.020
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292119301175
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2019.05.020?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Catherine C. Eckel & Cathleen Johnson & Claude Montmarquette & Christian Rojas, 2007. "Debt Aversion and the Demand for Loans for Postsecondary Education," Public Finance Review, , vol. 35(2), pages 233-262, March.
    2. Thomas Meissner, 2016. "Intertemporal consumption and debt aversion: an experimental study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 281-298, June.
    3. Holt, Charles A. & Porzio, Megan & Song, Michelle Yingze, 2017. "Price bubbles, gender, and expectations in experimental asset markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 72-94.
    4. Matthew Levy & Joshua Tasoff, 2016. "Exponential-Growth Bias And Lifecycle Consumption," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 545-583, June.
    5. Esther Duflo & Emmanuel Saez, 2003. "The Role of Information and Social Interactions in Retirement Plan Decisions: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 815-842.
    6. Kenneth Matheny & Charles Noussair, 2000. "An experimental study of decisions in dynamic optimization problems," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 15(2), pages 389-419.
    7. Alexander L. Brown & Zhikang Eric Chua & Colin F. Camerer, 2009. "Learning and Visceral Temptation in Dynamic Saving Experiments," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 197-231.
    8. Elena Asparouhova & Peter Bossaerts & Nilanjan Roy & William Zame, 2016. "“Lucas” in the Laboratory," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(6), pages 2727-2780, December.
    9. Filiz-Ozbay, Emel & Guryan, Jonathan & Hyndman, Kyle & Kearney, Melissa & Ozbay, Erkut Y., 2015. "Do lottery payments induce savings behavior? Evidence from the lab," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 1-24.
    10. Halim, Edward & Riyanto, Yohanes Eko & Roy, Nilanjan, 2016. "Price Dynamics and Consumption Smoothing in Experimental Asset Markets," MPRA Paper 71631, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Fenig, Guidon & Mileva, Mariya & Petersen, Luba, 2018. "Deflating asset price bubbles with leverage constraints and monetary policy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 1-27.
    12. Matthew Levy & Joshua Tasoff, 2016. "Exponential-Growth Bias and Lifecycle Consumption," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 545-583.
    13. CLARK, ROBERT L. & d'AMBROSIO, MADELEINE B. & McDERMED, ANN A. & SAWANT, KSHAMA, 2006. "Retirement plans and saving decisions: the role of information and education," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 45-67, March.
    14. Levy, Matthew & Tasoff, Joshua, 2016. "Exponential-growth bias and lifecycle consumption," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102087, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Catherine C. Eckel & Sascha C. Füllbrunn, 2015. "Thar SHE Blows? Gender, Competition, and Bubbles in Experimental Asset Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(2), pages 906-920, February.
    16. Sean Crockett & John Duffy & Yehuda Izhakian, 2019. "An Experimental Test of the Lucas Asset Pricing Model," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(2), pages 627-667.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lu, Kelin, 2022. "Overreaction to capital taxation in saving decisions," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    2. Bachmann, Kremena & Lot, Andre & Xu, Xiaogeng & Hens, Thorsten, 2023. "Experimental Research on Retirement Decision-Making: Evidence from Replications," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Meissner, Thomas & Rostam-Afschar, Davud, 2017. "Learning Ricardian Equivalence," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 273-288.
    2. John Duffy, 2022. "Why macroeconomics needs experimental evidence," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 73(1), pages 5-29, January.
    3. Coppock, Lee A. & Harper, Daniel Q. & Holt, Charles A., 2021. "Capital constraints and asset bubbles: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 75-88.
    4. Olckers, Matthew, 2021. "On track for retirement?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 76-88.
    5. Goda, Gopi Shah & Levy, Matthew R. & Flaherty Manchester, Colleen & Sojourner, Aaron & Tasoff, Joshua & Xiao, Jiusi, 2023. "Are retirement planning tools substitutes or complements to financial capability?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 561-573.
    6. Nobuyuki Hanaki & Yuta Shimodaira, 2024. "Wealth preferences and wealth inequality: Experimental evidence," ISER Discussion Paper 1260, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    7. Asen Ivanov, 2021. "Optimal pension plan default policies when employees are biased," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 23(3), pages 583-596, June.
    8. Thomas Meissner, 2016. "Intertemporal consumption and debt aversion: an experimental study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 281-298, June.
    9. Geiger, Martin & Luhan, Wolfgang J. & Scharler, Johann, 2016. "When do fiscal consolidations lead to consumption booms? Lessons from a laboratory experiment," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 1-20.
    10. Preuss, Marcel & Reyes, Germán & Somerville, Jason & Wu, Joy, 2022. "Inequality of Opportunity and Income Redistribution," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264138, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Breunig, Christoph & Grabova, Iuliia & Haan, Peter & Weinhardt, Felix & Weizsäcker, Georg, 2021. "Long-run expectations of households," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 31, pages 1-1.
    12. Hagen, Johannes & Malisa, Amedeus, 2022. "Financial fraud and individual investment behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 593-626.
    13. Goda, Gopi Shah & Levy, Matthew R. & Manchester, Colleen Flaherty & Sojourner, Aaron & Tasoff, Joshua, 2020. "Who is a passive saver under opt-in and auto-enrollment?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 301-321.
    14. Banerjee, Ritwik & Bhattacharya, Joydeep & Majumdar, Priyama, 2021. "Exponential-growth prediction bias and compliance with safety measures related to COVID-19," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    15. Ritwik Banerjee & Priyama Majumdar, 2023. "Exponential growth bias in the prediction of COVID‐19 spread and economic expectation," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(358), pages 653-689, April.
    16. Marcel Preuss & Germ'an Reyes & Jason Somerville & Joy Wu, 2022. "Inequality of Opportunity and Income Redistribution," Papers 2209.00534, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2024.
    17. Sandro Ambuehl & B. Douglas Bernheim & Annamaria Lusardi, 2022. "Evaluating Deliberative Competence: A Simple Method with an Application to Financial Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(11), pages 3584-3626, November.
    18. Ludwig Ensthaler & Olga Nottmeyer & Georg Weizsäcker & Christian Zankiewicz, 2018. "Hidden Skewness: On the Difficulty of Multiplicative Compounding Under Random Shocks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(4), pages 1693-1706, April.
    19. John Duffy & Janet Hua Jiang & Huan Xie, 2019. "Experimental Asset Markets with An Indefinite Horizon," CIRANO Working Papers 2019s-15, CIRANO.
    20. Abel, Martin & Byker, Tanya & Carpenter, Jeffrey, 2021. "Socially optimal mistakes? debiasing COVID-19 mortality risk perceptions and prosocial behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 456-480.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumption; Saving; Retirement; Price bubbles; Laboratory experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • G02 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Behavioral Finance: Underlying Principles
    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:119:y:2019:i:c:p:42-54. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eer .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.