IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_8935.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Time Preferences over the Life Cycle and Household Saving Puzzles

Author

Listed:
  • Wataru Kureishi
  • Hannah Paule-Paludkiewicz
  • Hitoshi Tsujiyama
  • Midori Wakabayashi

Abstract

Most economic models assume that time preferences are stable over time, but the evidence on their long-term stability is lacking. We study whether and how time preferences change over the life cycle, exploiting representative long-term panel data. We provide new evidence that discount rates decrease with age and the decline is remarkably linear over the life cycle. Decreasing discounting helps a canonical life-cycle model to explain the household saving puzzles of undersaving when young and oversaving after retirement. Relative to the model with constant discounting, the model’s fit to consumption and asset data profiles improves by 40% and 30%, respectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Wataru Kureishi & Hannah Paule-Paludkiewicz & Hitoshi Tsujiyama & Midori Wakabayashi, 2021. "Time Preferences over the Life Cycle and Household Saving Puzzles," CESifo Working Paper Series 8935, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8935
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp8935.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mariacristina De Nardi & Giulio Fella & Gonzalo Paz-Pardo, 2020. "Nonlinear Household Earnings Dynamics, Self-Insurance, and Welfare," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(2), pages 890-926.
    2. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2010. "Are Risk Aversion and Impatience Related to Cognitive Ability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1238-1260, June.
    3. Steffen Andersen & Glenn W. Harrison & Morten I. Lau & E. Elisabet Rutström, 2008. "Eliciting Risk and Time Preferences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(3), pages 583-618, May.
    4. Jonathan Cohen & Keith Marzilli Ericson & David Laibson & John Myles White, 2020. "Measuring Time Preferences," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(2), pages 299-347, June.
    5. Jonathan Heathcote & Kjetil Storesletten & Giovanni L. Violante, 2014. "Consumption and Labor Supply with Partial Insurance: An Analytical Framework," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(7), pages 2075-2126, July.
    6. Manuel Arellano & Richard Blundell & Stéphane Bonhomme, 2017. "Earnings and Consumption Dynamics: A Nonlinear Panel Data Framework," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 693-734, May.
    7. Stephan Meier & Charles D. Sprenger, 2015. "Temporal Stability of Time Preferences," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(2), pages 273-286, May.
    8. Paola Giuliano & Antonio Spilimbergo, 2014. "Growing up in a Recession," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 81(2), pages 787-817.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Time Preferences over the Life Cycle and Household Saving Puzzles
      by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog on 2021-03-29 21:52:42

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Richard Foltyn & Jonna Olsson, 2021. "Subjective Life Expectancies, Time Preference Heterogeneity, and Wealth Inequality," Working Papers 2021_13, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.

    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. Kureishi, Wataru & Paule-Paludkiewicz, Hannah & Tsujiyama, Hitoshi & Wakabayashi, Midori, 2021. "Time preferences over the life cycle and household saving puzzles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 123-139.
    2. Backes-Gellner, Uschi & Herz, Holger & Kosfeld, Michael & Oswald, Yvonne, 2021. "Do preferences and biases predict life outcomes? Evidence from education and labor market entry decisions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    3. Theloudis, Alexandros, 2021. "Consumption inequality across heterogeneous families," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    4. Jindrich Matousek & Tomas Havranek & Zuzana Irsova, 2022. "Individual discount rates: a meta-analysis of experimental evidence," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(1), pages 318-358, February.
    5. De Nardi, Mariacristina & Fella, Giulio & Knoef, Marike & Paz-Pardo, Gonzalo & Van Ooijen, Raun, 2021. "Family and government insurance: Wage, earnings, and income risks in the Netherlands and the U.S," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    6. Jetter, Michael & Magnusson, Leandro M. & Roth, Sebastian, 2020. "Becoming sensitive: Males’ risk and time preferences after the 2008 financial crisis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    7. Kureishi, Wataru & Paule-Paludkiewicz, Hannah & Tsujiyama, Hitoshi & Wakabayashi, Midori, 2020. "Time preferences over the life cycle," SAFE Working Paper Series 267, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    8. Ubfal, Diego, 2016. "How general are time preferences? Eliciting good-specific discount rates," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 150-170.
    9. Tim Friehe & Markus Pannenberg, 2020. "Time preferences and political regimes: evidence from reunified Germany," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(1), pages 349-387, January.
    10. Tony Beatton & Carly J. Moores & Dipanwita Sarkar & Jayanta Sarkar & Juliana Silva Goncalves & Helen A. Vidgen, 2021. "Do parental preferences predict engagement in child health programs?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(11), pages 2686-2700, November.
    11. James Andreoni & Christina Gravert & Michael A. Kuhn & Silvia Saccardo & Yang Yang, 2018. "Arbitrage Or Narrow Bracketing? On Using Money to Measure Intertemporal Preferences," NBER Working Papers 25232, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Armin Falk & Thomas Dohmen & Uwe Sunde, 2009. "Kontrolliert und repräsentativ: Beispiele zur Komplementarität von Labor‐ und Felddaten," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 10(s1), pages 54-74, May.
    13. Laurent Denant-Boemont & Enrico Diecidue & Olivier l’Haridon, 2017. "Patience and time consistency in collective decisions," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(1), pages 181-208, March.
    14. Jansen, Anika & Pfeifer, Harald & Raecke, Julia, 2017. "Only the brave? Risk and time preferences of decision makers and firms' investment in worker training," ROA Research Memorandum 002, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    15. Chetan Dave & Catherine Eckel & Cathleen Johnson & Christian Rojas, 2010. "Eliciting risk preferences: When is simple better?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 219-243, December.
    16. Michal Bauer & Julie Chytilová, 2013. "Women, Children and Patience: Experimental Evidence from Indian Villages," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(4), pages 662-675, November.
    17. Michele Belot & Philipp Kircher & Paul Muller, 2021. "Eliciting time preferences when income and consumption vary: Theory, validation & application to job search," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 21-013/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    18. Thomas Epper & Helga Fehr-Duda & Adrian Bruhin, 2011. "Viewing the future through a warped lens: Why uncertainty generates hyperbolic discounting," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 169-203, December.
    19. Delphine Boutin & Laurène Petifour & Haris Megzari, 2022. "Instability of preferences due to Covid-19 Crisis and emotions: a natural experiment from urban Burkina Faso," Working Papers hal-03623601, HAL.
    20. Bougherara, Douadia & Lapierre, Margaux & Préget, Raphaële & Sauquet, Alexandre, 2021. "Do farmers prefer increasing, decreasing, or stable payments in Agri-environmental schemes?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    time preferences; preference stability; discount rates; household saving puzzles;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D15 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Intertemporal Household Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • J10 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ces:ceswps:_8935. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.