Lifecycle/Economic Behavior & Survey Methodology

The life-cycle model organizes understanding of all major decisions, financial and otherwise, across life phases. It is central to my work as an economic data engineer. Particularly exciting is work developing the Copenhagen Life Panel with Soren-Leth Petersen and our co-investigators, including Victoria Gregory, Eungik Lee, and Johan Saeverud. We have developed new survey instruments to study beliefs about life-cycle income and how they evolve over time in relation to history, memory, and experience.

Measuring and Modeling Attention

Engineering of new data sets will become an increasingly essential professional activity as attentional research advances. State-dependent stochastic choice data is one ideal.

Long-term-care utility and late-in-life saving

Older wealth holders spend down assets much more slowly than predicted by classic life-cycle models. We use strategic survey questions (SSQs) to show that the desire to self-insure against long-term-care risk substantially explains this.

Older Americans would work longer if jobs were flexible

We use strategic survey questions (SSQs) to show that many older American would work longer, particularly if jobs were more flexible.

The joy of giving or assisted living? Using strategic surveys to separate public care aversion from bequest motives

We introduce “strategic survey questions” to separately identify motives confounded in choice. We separately identify “public care aversion” (PCA) from bequest motives.. We identify PCA as very significant and find bequest motives that spread deep into the middle class.

Measuring self-control problems

We introduce a survey instrument to measure self-control problems. While self-control problems are typically seen as resulting in overconsumption and low wealth, we identify a significant group who under consume and thereby accumulate high levels of wealth. In addition, self-control problems are smaller in scale for older than for younger respondents.

Retirement consumption: Insights from a survey

We show that many working households expect a considerable fall in consumption when they retire. Those who are already retired report significantly smaller falls in consumption than are expected by those who are still working.

Wealth accumulation and the propensity to plan

Why do similar households end up with very different levels of wealth? We show that differences in the attitudes and skills with which they approach financial planning are a significant factor. We use new and unique survey data to assess these differences and to measure each household’s “propensity to plan.” We show that those with a higher such propensity spend more time developing financial plans and that this shift in planning is associated with increased wealth. We uncover a strong relationship between the propensity to plan and budgeting behavior.