Diverging Mortality Inequality Trends among Young and Old in the Netherlands*

We analyse the trends in inequality in mortality across poverty groups at different ages over the period 1996–2016 in the Netherlands. In addition, we examine whether these trends are related to unequal changes in avoidable mortality, separated by preventable and treatable causes of death. We find that while inequalities in mortality have decreased at ages up to 65, inequalities increased for the oldest age groups. The decline in inequality at the younger ages can, to a large extent, be explained by a strong decrease of mortality from preventable and cardiovascular causes among the poor. The link between inequality and avoidable mortality at the oldest ages is less straightforward. The increasing inequality at old age might be the result of the inequalities shifting from the young to the older age groups, or of the rich benefiting more from the recent health (care) improvements than the poor.     

Inexperienced investors and bubbles

We use mutual fund manager data from the technology bubble to examine the hypothesis that inexperienced investors play a role in the formation of asset price bubbles. Using age as a proxy for managers’ investment experience, we find that around the peak of the technology bubble, mutual funds run by younger managers are more heavily invested in technology stocks, relative to their style benchmarks, than their older colleagues. Furthermore, young managers, but not old managers, exhibit trend-chasing behavior in their technology stock investments. As a result, young managers increase their technology holdings during the run-up, and decrease them during the downturn. Both results are in line with the behavior of inexperienced investors in experimental asset markets. The economic significance of young managers’ actions is amplified by large inflows into their funds prior to the peak in technology stock prices.     

Intergenerational Transfers and Insurance Policy Design

Abstract

Group health insurance policies offering an identical benefit package to every member of the group result in lower expected health benefits for younger cohorts than older cohorts. The dispersion in insurance benefits across age groups differs among insurance policies. Simulation results presented in this paper demonstrate that a shift from comprehensive health insurance to high-deductible health insurance decreases the share of expected benefits going to younger cohorts. An estimated 81.5% of the 23-to-32-year-old cohort is expected to receive less than $500 in health benefits during a year for one prototypical high-deductible health plan. Low expected benefits for younger relatively healthy cohorts could increase the number of younger individuals who eschew health coverage. Age-rated premiums are probably the most straightforward way to stimulate demand for high-deductible health plans among younger healthier individuals.     

On Cost Tradeoffs Between Conservative and Market Value Accounting

We identify a cost tradeoff relevant to the comparison of alternative accounting regimes. We compare equilibrium deadweight losses, due to transacting and auditing, across the historical cost, lower-of-cost-or-market, and market value regimes. We provide conditions for each of the regimes to dominate the other two. We show that while market-value accounting is likely to prevail in an inflationary setting, it may also be optimal under deflation. Similarly, lower-of-cost-or-market is likely to prevail in a deflationary setting, though it may also be optimal under inflation. Last, historical cost prevails only if the variation in asset prices is sufficiently high.     

Psychology, meaning and the challenges of longevity

Humankind has begun to reap one of the most valued harvests of its scientific and technological pursuits: a significant increase in human longevity. We now live longer than ever before, due in large part to advances in medicine and health care that provide those who have the opportunity to afford them a lifespan that for many approaches or exceeds the 100-year mark. It is now within the realm of possibility that people will live lives of 125 years or more within the next century. However, our ability to increase physical longevity may have outstripped our ability to deal individually and socially with these new lives, these new existences that go well beyond what has traditionally been considered a “working life”. How well-prepared are we psychologically to cope with the meaning of a life that extends to as much as 150 years or more? In this new “age of longevity”, what are the challenges for psychology as a resource for humanity in its quest to give definition to the experience of being alive, as well as for managing the affairs of everyday life? Traditional developmental theories in psychology tend to articulate early stages of life in detail, but are generally mute on the matter of later life. Cognitive psychology has been inclined to view longevity as leading to a deterioration of mental faculties due to “aging”. This paper examines the psychological implications of increased lifespans from an optimistic perspective by reviewing current developments in research on cognition, emotion and aging. The review identifies trends in psychology that, if emphasized and strengthened, may lead to improved theoretical frameworks that cast longevity in a positive light, and that identify how people can find meaning and fulfillment throughout their whole lifespan.

“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life for which the first was made.” Robert Browning “Rabbi Ben Ezra”

I first encountered Browning’s works as an undergraduate, and being a pre-engineering student at the time my tendencies toward poetry were stunted to say the best. Few of the great works of literature my teachers compelled me to read at that stage of my life and development made enough of an impact to last beyond the length of the course requiring their reading. Much has changed since then and my interests in literature and what literature has to say that is of value for our lives has deepened. But Browning’s enthusiastic call to join him in aging has always been a fascination. Indeed, what could be more of a contradiction to modern attitudes about becoming elderly than to claim “the best is yet to be”? What can be more of a challenge to how we approach the relationship between being young and being old than to claim that the last of life is “for which the first was meant”? What can the possible rewards of the golden years be that transcend the glorious enthusiasms, unfettered optimisms, and just pure physical conveniences of being young? Or, was Browning simply trying to sucker us all into a fait accompli, the hopeful outcome of which is the envy of the very youth that the aged often envy so much?There is little enough envy of the aged today. I approach these years with great caution, recognizing that how I look upon those who are two decades older than myself will, in turn, condition me to see myself in those years much in the way that I see them now. “Aging” is not something anyone really wants to do. We want to, at best, “grow older”, a perspective that carries with it a more positive spin: growing wiser, growing up, or simply “growing” with all of its new-age connotations of personal enlightenment and becoming. I am not “aging”, I am “becoming at one”.The language we have adopted to talk about the time-course of life, and particularly about the years in the latter third of that course, does much to frame both how we live those years and how we anticipate them in our youth. Our expectations are ones of decline, physical debilitation and mental infirmity. We “retire”, as in withdrawal into seclusion, away from the mainstream of life and into the backwater eddy of inaction. On the shelf.Much of this view has been reinforced by how humanity has approached examining this aspect of its own time course through science. We study aging with an eye to how its effects influence the abilities of those so afflicted to perform or operate compared to those who still have a grasp on their full faculties. And, of course, we find that as people grow older, they do not approach life in the same way as do younger people.Part of our view on life comes from the very way in which science is funded: those interested in the last of life often receive their support from the National Institute on Aging, not the National Institute on The Last of Life for Which the First Was Made. Research agendas often focus on identifying sources of infirmity and potential prostheses, either physical or social, that can ease the lives of the elderly on their way toward achieving the goal of successful aging. All too often, success in aging means imposing relatively few demands on social resources or on the lives of younger people, such as family members. In our “ageist” society, elderliness is not generally equated with status and stature. Less and less, the young “listen” to the old out of deep interest in their lives and their experiences. Wisdom is the providence of the freshly matured and recently educated.The shortcomings of life in the advancing years are many and well-documented in the research literature. Memory spans decrease, information retrieval becomes less reliable, and new information is less readily assimilated. As people become older, they appear to rely more and more on automatic processing of information, quick associations and the like, rather than deliberative and conscious reasoning [1]. For the older mind, intuition is at least moderately preferred over analysis. For example, younger people tend to interpret stories analytically, focusing on details, while older people tend to focus less on a story’s details and more on its “gist” and its underlying significance to things that are important to them [2], and tend to do better at grasping and dealing with information in terms of its holistic meaning [3 and 4].The effects of these differences in information processing between young and old can be seen in practical matters of everyday life, such as decision making and judgment. Johnson [5], for example, found that older adults use simplifying decision strategies more often than younger adults. These strategies, such as noncompensatory rules that consider only the positive or the negative aspects of a decision option but not both, relieve one of the psychological burden of making complex and effortful tradeoffs, at the possible expense of efficiency and accuracy. Chasseigne et al. [6] found that as people age, they become less consistent in their use of information in making judgments and predictions; even reducing the overall information load and demands on memory does little to improve the reliability of their judgments. ¹     

Impact of Replacing a Defined Benefit Pension with a Defined Contribution Plan or a Cash Balance Plan

Abstract

Four pension plan conversions are examined to determine the impact on retirement benefits of workers. The study was based on interviews with top management, employee surveys, and actuarial analysis of retirement benefits under the old and new pension plans. In general, workers who leave the firm prior to the age of early retirement can expect increased benefits under the new defined contribution and cash balance plans, whereas older, more senior workers can expect to accrue smaller benefits after the plan conversions. Recognizing these potential adverse effects, the employers in our studies provided various types of transition benefits to existing workers or gave employees the choice of remaining in the old defined benefit plan. Employee surveys reveal that younger workers are more supportive of the new pension plans than are older workers. These case studies also indicate that communication by managements with their employees is very important to the successful implementation of plan conversions.     

The Role of the Personal Tax System in Old‐Age Support: A Survey of 15 Countries

This paper examines the tax treatment of pensioners in 15 industrialised countries. Using a standard methodology, it calculates the average and marginal tax rates of older people and compares them with those of people of working age. These are then combined with a model of pension entitlements in different countries. This shows that tax differentials play an important role in old‐age support. We discuss the appropriate way for the tax system to support pensioners and the implications for the tax treatment of private pensions.     

CEO age and the riskiness of corporate policies

Prior theoretical work generates conflicting predictions with respect to how CEO age impacts risk-taking behavior. Consistent with the prediction that risk-taking behavior decreases as CEOs become older, I document a negative relation between CEO age and stock return volatility. Further analyses reveal that older CEOs reduce firm risk through less risky investment policies. Specifically, older CEOs invest less in research and development, make more diversifying acquisitions, manage firms with more diversified operations, and maintain lower operating leverage. Further, firm risk and the riskiness of corporate policies are lowest when both the CEO and the next most influential executive are older and highest when both of these managers are younger. Although older CEOs prefer less risky investment policies, I document results suggesting that CEO and firm risk preferences tend to be aligned. Lastly, I find that a trading strategy that goes long in a portfolio of stocks consisting of firms managed by younger CEOs and short in a portfolio of stocks comprised of firms led by older CEOs would generate positive risk-adjusted returns. Overall, my results imply that CEO age can have a significant impact on risk-taking behavior and firm performance.     

Something to prove: reputation in teams

Agents work for their own reputations when young but for their firms' when old. An individual with an established reputation cannot credibly commit to exerting effort when working alone. However, by hiring and working with juniors of uncertain reputation, seniors will have incentives to exert effort. Incentives for young agents arise from a concern for their own reputation (and the opportunity to take over the firm), whereas older agents work for the reputation of their firms (and the opportunity to sell out to juniors). Thus, the article explains the choice to work in teams. It also exemplifies how type uncertainty in reputation models may be endogenously and strategically introduced.     

Inequality in Mortality in Spain*

We analyse the evolution of mortality rates in Spain by age and gender between 1990 and 2018. We compare municipalities, ranked by socio‐economic status (SES) and grouped into bins of similar population size, to study changes not only in levels but also in inequality in mortality across the SES spectrum. We document large decreases in mortality rates throughout the period for all age groups, including children, even after 2000, and continuing after the Great Recession. These declines are stronger for boys and men, who had higher mortality rates to begin with. We find that inequality in mortality across municipalities was low among the young by 2018, while it was higher among adult men and older women. Inequality in fact increased over the period for older men. We explore the role of different causes of death and find that this increase in inequality is driven by stronger improvements in cancer‐related mortality among men living in richer areas. These improvements are not found among women, given their increases in mortality due to lung cancer.     

The Young and the Restless: A Study of Age and Acquisition Propensity of CEOs of UK Firms

Using a large sample of CEOs of UK firms, we show that CEO age is a key determinant of acquisition activity. We find that younger CEOs are more likely to acquire another firm and spend more on large capital expenditures. We argue that while younger CEOs of both UK and US firms undertake more acquisitions than their older peers, their motivations for acquisitions might differ. We find that the stock market perceives acquisitions by younger CEOs to be of a higher quality. Following previous studies, we use CEO tenure as a proxy for reputation, and find that large acquisitions enhance CEO reputation, especially for younger CEOs. In contrast to the previous findings for CEOs of US firms, we determine that the compensation of CEOs in the UK does not increase after acquisitions. This absence of a compensation incentive for CEOs of UK firms is consistent with the idea that the UK compensation structure is more restrictive and has a smaller equity‐based component. Our evidence is also inconsistent with an overconfidence effect. Overall, our results provide consistent evidence of executive signaling by younger CEOs of UK firms eager to distinguish themselves.     

Capital Structure,Corporate Taxation and Firm Age*

This paper analyses the relationship between corporate taxation, firm age and debt. We adapt a standard model of capital structure choice under corporate taxation, focusing on the financing and investment decisions typically faced by a firm. Our model suggests that the debt ratio is associated positively with the corporate tax rate and negatively with firm age. Further, we predict that the tax-induced advantage of debt is more important for older firms than for younger ones. To test these hypotheses empirically, we use a cross-section of around 405,000 firms from 35 European countries and 127 NACE three-digit industries. In line with previous research, we find that a firm's debt ratio increases with the corporate tax rate. Further, we observe that older firms exhibit smaller debt ratios than their younger counterparts. Finally, consistent with our theoretical model, we find a positive interaction between corporate taxation and firm age, indicating that the impact of corporate taxation on debt increases over a firm's lifetime.     

From watchdog to watchman: Do independent directors monitor a CEO of their own age?

We examine the impact of age similarity between independent directors and the CEO on earnings management. Using changes in independent director composition due to same-aged director deaths and retirements for identification, we find that firms with the presence of independent directors who have the same age with the CEO are more likely to manage earnings. We further find that age similarity between these two parties increases earnings management through lowering the effectiveness of board monitoring. Additionally, this positive impact decreases as the age gap widens, but intensifies if independent directors share other characteristics with the CEO, if independent directors sit on audit or nomination committees, if firms with lower information asymmetry and if CEOs are older. Our results are robust to alternative proxies of earnings management.     

Disability insurance and optimal income taxation

This paper studies the design of disability insurance scheme when agents differ in their privately known productivity. We extend the Diamond and Mirrlees (1978) two period model to allow for agents differing ex-ante in their productivity and characterize the optimal nonlinear tax transfer that maximizes a utilitarian welfare function when per-period earnings and age are observable while individuals’ productivity and health status are not observable. We show that the induced tax/benefit scheme should exhibit a marginal income tax that decreases with age for some agents. A marginal subsidy on the young high productive income may be desirable. While the disability scheme always involves the old low productive agents to be indifferent between working and claiming disability benefits, this result is not always true for the old high productive agents. JEL Classification H55 · H23 · E62     

The specification and power of tests to detect abnormal changes in corporate investment

We evaluate methods used to measure abnormal changes in capital expenditures. We examine both statistical tests and models of expected capital expenditures. We find that commonly used research designs yield test statistics that are misspecified, even in random samples. In cases where sample firms share a common characteristic such as extremely low or high investment, size, leverage, return on assets or market-to-book ratio, it is very important to match sample firms to a control group that shares this pre-event characteristic. We also find that using control groups, rather than a single control firm, yields more powerful test statistics.     

CEO Preferences and Acquisitions

This paper explores the impact of target CEOs’ retirement preferences on takeovers. Using retirement age as a proxy for CEOs’ private merger costs, we find strong evidence that target CEOs’ preferences affect merger activity. The likelihood of receiving a successful takeover bid is sharply higher when target CEOs are close to age 65. Takeover premiums and target announcement returns are similar for retirement‐age and younger CEOs, implying that retirement‐age CEOs increase firm sales without sacrificing premiums. Better corporate governance is associated with more acquisitions of firms led by young CEOs, and with a smaller increase in deals at retirement age.     

Gender and Age Differences in Socio‐economic Inequalities in Total and Avoidable Mortality in Portugal: A Trend Analysis*

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how socio‐economic inequalities in mortality (total and avoidable) evolved in Portugal from the 1990s onwards by looking at differences by gender, age group, poverty and cause of death. Results show that mortality in younger age groups is decreasing faster in the most deprived municipalities. Yet, avoidable deaths do not follow this pattern, particularly with respect to treatable mortality amenable to the health care services. Although total and avoidable mortality are decreasing across all age groups and both genders, decreases in treatable deaths during and after the 2011–14 economic crisis slowed down among the young, with a sharpening of socio‐economic inequalities in avoidable mortality among adults and the elderly. This provides evidence that, in some respects, focusing programmes on those living in poor circumstances has been successful over time. However, the impact of the Great Recession on health care services might have contributed to a significant increase in some treatable causes of death associated with these services.     

The hazards of mutual fund underperformance: A Cox regression analysis

This paper investigates the process determining mutual funds' conditional probability of closure, i.e., their hazard function. Using a nonparametric approach to estimate the effects of a fund's age on its hazard rate, we find a distinctly non-linear, inverse U-shaped pattern in the relationship. Hence, young and very old funds are least likely to be closed down. A fund's relative performance and (less significantly) the level of return in the sector in which the fund operates are also identified as important factors in the closure decision. Results from semiparametric Cox regressions are compared with those from the discrete choice probit model used by Brown and Goetzmann [Brown, S.J., Goetzmann, W., 1995. Performance persistence, Journal of Finance. Vol. 50, pp. 679–698]. Finally, we provide a complete summary of the fund attrition process by estimating the survivor function, indicating the proportion of funds that survive up to a given age, and we identify the effect of fund attrition on standard measures of persistence of fund performance.     

Working capital (mis)management – impact of executive age

Several recent studies have used the upper echelons theory to explain the impact of personal traits of top executives on various corporate policies. In this, first of its kind, study we find that older executives invest more in working capital; take longer to convert inventories to cash; and pay their suppliers sooner. These findings are consistent with the argument that risk aversion increases with executive age. Our findings indicate that executive age has significant bearing on working capital management policies. This study also initiates new avenues in research relating behavioral aspect of executives with short‐term financial management.     

Effect of age on mortality experience in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

Medical authors typically combine all patient groups to increase the amount of data available for analysis. Use of this statistical methodology generally conceals higher mortality ratios at younger ages and masks survival differences related to disease severity and comorbid impairments. This paper discusses the effects of age and clinical characteristics on mortality experience in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Limited data suggest the mortality pattern associated with this impairment is similar to that observed with most disorders: excess mortality (compared to the general population) that is high at younger ages, intermediate in middle-aged people, and minimal in the very elderly. Optimism regarding generally favorable mortality at older ages must be tempered with caution since studies report much poorer experience in certain subgroups of elderly patients with this impairment.