Assisted savings for retirement: An experimental analysis

Clement E. Bohr, Charles Holt and Alexandra Schubert

European Economic Review, 2019, vol. 119, issue C, 42-54

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.

Keywords: Consumption; Saving; Retirement; Price bubbles; Laboratory experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D81 D84 E21 G02 J32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292119301175
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:119:y:2019:i:c:p:42-54

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2019.05.020

Access Statistics for this article

European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer

More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().