Cognitive abilities and portfolio choice

We study the relation between cognitive abilities and stockholding using the recent Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which has detailed data on wealth and portfolio composition of individuals aged 50+ in 11 European countries and three indicators of cognitive abilities: mathematical, verbal fluency, and recall skills. We find that the propensity to invest in stocks is strongly associated with cognitive abilities, for both direct stock market participation and indirect participation through mutual funds and retirement accounts. Since the decision to invest in less information-intensive assets (such as bonds) is less strongly related to cognitive abilities, we conclude that the association between cognitive abilities and stockholding is driven by information constraints, rather than by features of preferences or psychological traits.     

Cognitive function, numeracy and retirement saving trajectories

This paper examines the extent to which cognitive abilities relate to differences in trajectories for key economic outcomes as individuals move towards and through their retirement. We look at whether differences in baseline numeracy (measured in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing in 2002) and broader cognitive ability predict the subsequent trajectories of outcomes such as wealth, retirement income and key dimensions of retirement expectations. Those with lower numeracy are shown to have different wealth trajectories both pre- and post-retirement than their more numerate counterparts, but the distributions of retirement expectations and net replacement rates are similar across numeracy groups.     

退休对认知能力的短期和长期影响*——兼论延迟退休的“健康红利”

本文使用中国健康与养老追踪调查(CHARLS) 2011—2015年3轮调查数据,通过研究退休与认知衰退的关系,探讨了延迟退休对认知能力的影响。估计结果表明,退休在短期能够抑制认知衰退,但是从长期来看退休对认知有负面的影响。具体来说,在退休后3年内,退休对认知衰退有抑制作用,在退休大约3年~4年后,退休对认知的积极影响逐渐变为负面影响。按性别分组的估计结果表明,退休对认知能力的负面长期影响对男性而言更突出。本文的研究揭示了退休对认知能力的短期和长期影响存在差异。从政策的角度讲,适当提高法定退休年龄能够缩短退休持续时间,对抑制认知衰退有积极作用,即延迟退休能够带来认知方面的“健康红利”。     

退休对认知能力的短期和长期影响*——兼论延迟退休的“健康红利”

本文使用中国健康与养老追踪调查(CHARLS) 2011—2015年3轮调查数据，通过研究退休与认知衰退的关系，探讨了延迟退休对认知能力的影响。估计结果表明，退休在短期能够抑制认知衰退，但是从长期来看退休对认知有负面的影响。具体来说，在退休后3年内，退休对认知衰退有抑制作用，在退休大约3年~4年后，退休对认知的积极影响逐渐变为负面影响。按性别分组的估计结果表明，退休对认知能力的负面长期影响对男性而言更突出。本文的研究揭示了退休对认知能力的短期和长期影响存在差异。从政策的角度讲，适当提高法定退休年龄能够缩短退休持续时间，对抑制认知衰退有积极作用，即延迟退休能够带来认知方面的“健康红利”。     

The decision to seek advice in the self-directed retirement fund industry

This article examines the influence of investor knowledge and the cognitive bias that arises from overconfidence on the advice-seeking behaviour of investors managing their own retirement funds. Specifically, we trace whether overestimating one’s own technical and financial abilities can hinder the willingness to seek advice, particularly when it would be in the investors’ best interest to do so. We identify a subset of investors who are not knowledgeable and yet do not seek advice. These investors exhibit overconfidence in their ability to manage a fund, despite holding under-diversified and less sophisticated portfolios relative to their peers. Given the global rise in investors choosing to manage their own retirement funds and the importance of seeking advice in this context, there are direct policy implications from these results. They suggest a need to identify and target investors who display overconfidence since they are most likely to be managing underperforming retirement investments in the longer term.     

Gender difference in the impact of retirement on cognitive abilities: Evidence from urban China

This paper examines the impact of retirement on cognitive functioning by gender in urban China and investigates the underlying mechanisms. Based on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, the paper uses the mandatory retirement ages and different policy enforcement between the public and private sectors as instruments for retirement status. The analysis finds substantial gender heterogeneity in the effect of retirement on cognition, with a positive and significant effect for males, but a negative and less significant effect for females. The beneficial effects on cognition are stronger for male blue-collar workers, who are likely to pursue a more active lifestyle at retirement. Further investigation shows that the results are partly driven by differential behavioral changes at retirement, and the gender difference in retirement ages may also play a potential role.     

COGNITIVE ABILITIES,ANALYTIC COGNITIVE STYLE AND OVERCONFIDENCE: A COMMENTARY ON DUTTLE (2016)

In his recent paper, Duttle (2016) showed that individuals with higher cognitive abilities show less overconfidence. In these findings, cognitive abilities were equated with an analytic cognitive style (as measured by a cognitive reflection test, or CRT), although recent works in the field of cognitive psychology suggest separating these two constructs. In particular, it is argued that the analytic cognitive style, but not cognitive abilities, decreases susceptibility to cognitive biases. Analyses of data from Duttle's study support this assertion. Implications for cognitive psychology and behavioural economics are discussed.     

(Un)expected retirement and the consumption puzzle

In this work we revisit the retirement consumption puzzle using Italian panel data. As emphasised in the literature, the observed consumption drop might be due to unexpected wealth shocks at retirement which modify optimal consumption plans. Using an Euler equation approach, we test the impact of unexpected retirement on the consumption patterns of individuals around the age of retirement by using the panel component of the Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW). This dataset contains information on the expected age of retirement which can be used to distinguish between expected and unexpected retirement. Furthermore, we investigate the heterogeneous behaviour of individuals with different levels of education and wealth. We find evidence of a consumption drop at retirement especially for low educated people and individuals with little wealth. The consumption drop at retirement, on average, does not seem to be a response to unexpected retirement. Disaggregating our sample, we find that the consumption drop persists among low educated people with little wealth available, irrespective of whether retirement was expected or not. Highly educated people, conversely, do smooth their consumption, unless they have low wealth and are hit by an unexpected shock at retirement in which case they are forced to drop consumption.     

Why Women Have Lower Retirement Savings: The Australian Case

This study provides empirical evidence of the gender gap in retirement savings trajectories using a large longitudinal Australian database. The persistent trend of retirement income policy over recent decades has been to place responsibility for retirement savings accumulation with the individual employee. These plans are fundamentally linked to employment conditions and individual choices, which shape retirement savings trajectories and outcomes. Australia has a mature compulsory system and thus provides insight for countries embarking on similar paths. This study shows that the gender gap in retirement savings is observable from early on in an individual’s paid working life and persists over time, providing evidence that women are disadvantaged early in their careers, with few signs of improvement. Men, in contrast, are overrepresented in the upper quartile of growth in retirement savings. This study provides important empirical evidence for policymakers concerned with gender differences in retirement outcomes.     

Effect of cognitive abilities and non-cognitive abilities on labor wages: empirical evidence from the Chinese Employer-Employee Survey

ABSTRACT

The existing literature suggests that worker’s cognitive and non-cognitive abilities have a significant impact on wages. However, presently there is little research in this area of ??China’s labor force, due to scanty data. To this end, this Paper conducted a CEES-based data research, which found that, the cognitive and non-cognitive abilities of male, skilled workers have a greater impact on their wages, as compared with those of the female, unskilled workers. The OLS regression based on the Mincer Wage Equation found that, the impact of non-cognitive abilities on wages is generally larger than that of the cognitive abilities. All cognitive abilities have a positive impact on wages, wherein English proficiency has the greatest elasticity of wages, which is 12.1%. Of all non-cognitive abilities, Conscientiousness has the highest wage elasticity, which is 13.6%, whereas Agreeableness has a negative wage elasticity of ?6.32%.

Abbreviations: CEES: Chinese Employer-Employee Survey OLS: Ordinary least squares     

Optimal retirement age,leisure and consumption

In this paper, we study the determination of optimal retirement age, optimal leisure time, and optimal consumption, and we also analyze their relationships using an optimal control theory. We establish a life cycle model and analyze the factors of consumption, leisure, saving, mortality and retirement behaviors simultaneously with an orthogonal-array experimental design. Our results show that the initial salary level and the growth rate of salary are the most important determining factors of the optimal retirement age. The initial consumption level and the interest rate are also important factors affecting optimal retirement age. The mortality improvement has a minor effect on the optimal retirement age. The effects of the Social Security on the optimal retirement age depend on the Social Security tax and the level of Social Security benefit.     

Cognitive abilities and behavioral biases

We use a simple, three-item test for cognitive abilities to investigate whether established behavioral biases that play a prominent role in behavioral economics and finance are related to cognitive abilities. We find that higher test scores on the cognitive reflection test of Frederick [Frederick, S., 2005. Cognitive reflection and decision-making. Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, 25–42] indeed are correlated with lower incidences of the conjunction fallacy and conservatism in updating probabilities. Test scores are also significantly related to subjects’ time and risk preferences. Test scores have no influence on the amount of anchoring, although there is evidence of anchoring among all subjects. Even if incidences of most biases are lower for people with higher cognitive abilities, they still remain substantial.     

Optimal Retirement with Increasing Longevity

We develop an optimizing life‐cycle model of retirement with perfect capital markets. We show that longer healthy life expectancy usually leads to later retirement, but with an elasticity less than unity. We calibrate our model using data from the US and find that, over the last century, the effect of rising incomes, which promote early retirement, has dominated the effect of rising lifespans. Our model predicts continuing declines in the optimal retirement age, despite rising life expectancy, provided the rate of real wage growth remains as high as in the last century.     

Mortality change,the uncertainty effect,and retirement

We examine the role of declining mortality in explaining the rise of retirement over the course of the twentieth century. We construct a model in which individuals make labor/leisure choices over their lifetimes subject to uncertainty about their dates of death. In an environment with high mortality, an individual who saves for retirement faces a high risk of dying before he can enjoy his planned leisure. In this case, the optimal plan is for people to work until they die. As mortality falls, however, it becomes optimal to plan, and save for, retirement. We analyze our model using two mathematical formulations of the survival function as well as data on actual changes in the US life table over the last century, and show that this “uncertainty effect” of declining mortality would have more than outweighed the “horizon effect” by which rising life expectancy would have led to later retirement.     

Strategic Responses: A Survey Experiment on Opposition to Pension Reforms*

The responses given in opinion polls on future policy reforms reflect both subjective expectations and preferences. We disentangle these factors using data from a controlled survey experiment conducted in Germany. At the time of the experiment, an increased retirement age had been proposed as part of a pension reform. Thus, the survey respondents faced an incentive to give biased responses. By understating their expected work ability at the age of retirement, they could make the increase of the retirement age a less attractive policy option. We find evidence for such strategic response behavior, and this strategic bias appears to be stronger in former communist East Germany.     

The retirement consumption puzzle revisited: Evidence from the mandatory retirement policy in China

Using data from China's Urban Household Survey and exploiting China's mandatory retirement policy, we use the regression discontinuity approach to estimate the impact of retirement on household expenditures. Retirement reduces total non-durable expenditures by 19%. Among the categories of non-durable expenditures, retirement reduces work-related expenditures and expenditures on food consumed at home but has an insignificant effect on expenditures on entertainment. After excluding these three components, retirement does not have an effect on the remaining non-durable expenditures. It suggests that the retirement consumption puzzle might not be a puzzle if an extended life-cycle model with home production is considered.     

A NOTE ON “A ONE‐SECTOR NEOCLASSICAL GROWTH MODEL WITH ENDOGENOUS RETIREMENT”: EXISTENCE OF MULTIPLE STEADY STATES*

This note extends Matsuyama's 0–1 endogenous retirement choice model to the framework with continuous endogenous retirement choice to study the consumption‐saving decision and capital accumulation in an overlapping generation model. The conditions for the existence of multiple steady states have been derived. In contrast to the 0 or 1 labour choice, the partial retirement may be a stable steady state under the continuous endogenous retirement choice in the second period. And this implies that partial retirement may be a stable optimal choice. Also, we find that the retirement choice depends on the initial capital stock when there are multiple steady states.     

Does providing informal elderly care hasten retirement? Evidence from Japan

This paper examines the implications of providing care to elderly parents for adult children's retirement plans using micro data from a Japanese survey. We find no significant effect of caregiving on family caregivers’ planned retirement age if we do not take into account caregiving intensity but find a negative and significant effect on retirement plans for intensive caregivers, particularly among women. These findings suggest that relying on family members to provide elderly care can pose a serious challenge to the ongoing efforts of the government to promote the labor supply of women and the elderly as a way of addressing the shrinkage of the working‐age population in Japan. The estimation results suggest that ensuring access to formal care services can help family members reconcile their paid work with caregiving requirements, thereby alleviating the adverse effect of caregiving on their retirement plans. The results also suggest that the financial burden of formal care services could require caregivers to postpone retirement in some cases.     

Social insurance for the elderly

We study the effects of retirement benefits provided by social insurance programs on consumption, portfolio choice, and retirement in a continuous-time theoretical model. We show that people tend to retire earlier with an increase in retirement social insurance benefits (SIBs), consistent with empirical evidence. We show also that people tend to increase savings before retirement in anticipation of increased retirement benefits, a counter-intuitive result. The response of risky investment with an increase in the SIBs is ambiguous, depending on parameter values. The overall social welfare will increase with an increase in SIBs if the balanced budget constraint is satisfied. We also investigate the effects of changes in the two streams of the SIBs (paid in perishable goods and cash) and the proportion of workers in entire population on social welfare.     

The Role of Income Effects in Early Retirement

We provide a long‐term perspective on the individual retirement behavior and on the future of retirement by emphasizing the role of (negative) income effects. We consider a political economic theoretical framework, with actuarially “fair” and “unfair” early retirement schemes, and derive a political equilibrium with positive social security contribution rates and early retirement. A reduction in the wages in youth, consistent with the recent labor market trends since the massive introduction of temporary jobs, induces workers to postpone retirement, and—in the “unfair” system—leads to lower contribution rates. A reduction in the growth rate of the economy has opposite effects on the retirement decisions, leading—in the “unfair” system—to more early retirement. Aging induces a negative income effect, but has also an opposite political effect on social security contributions and retirement decisions. For an actuarially “fair” social security system, we provide conditions for the political effect to dominate; in an “unfair” scheme, numerical simulations confirm a slight predominance of the political effect, as contribution rates increase. These results may shed some light on the future of early retirement in aging societies.