255 research outputs found
Methodological aspects of the SAVE data set
No full textThis paper describes the general design of the SAVE survey: the design of the questionnaire, inter-viewer and interviewee motivation, and the sampling designs of the various subsamples collected in 2001 and 2003. It discusses the representativeness of the data, explains the construction of weights, and provides probit regressions to analyse potential selectivity problems. The paper finishes by discussing implications for the use of the SAVE data in various estimation procedures.
Household Saving in Germany:
No full textThis paper presents selected highlights drawn from the German SAVE surveys in 2001 and 2003, expanding the findings of Börsch-Supan and Essig (2003) along three lines. First, it analyses the households' assessment of their general, economic and financial well-being in the past, present and future. Second, it reports findings for the respondents' information level on, and expectations about, the public pension system. Third, it presents answers to a newly developed set of questions about risk. Specifically, it tests the reliability of the experimental question design and links self-assessed risk to respondents' financial behavior.
Item nonresponse to financial questions in household surveys: An experimental study of interviewer and mode effects
No full textWe analyze nonresponse to questions on financial items such as income and asset holdings in the SAVE survey, exploiting a controlled field experiment. As part of the SAVE study, a representative survey conducted in Germany in 2001, questions on household income and financial assets were administered using different interview modes (personal interview vs. drop-off questionnaire). The data also allow investigating the influence of interviewer characteristics on nonresponse. Our results are in line with predictions derived from models of survey response behavior that have been developed in survey research and social psychology.
Precautionary saving and old-age provisions: Do subjective saving motives measures work?
No full textThe literature on precautionary saving provides contradictory views on the importance of precautionary saving. The SAVE data offer the possibility to generate some of the frequently used instruments known from the literature in order to measure the extent of precautionary savings. This paper compares the influence of these instruments on long-run and short-run saving measures. In addition, SAVE contains information on a broad range of saving motives. This paper uses these short-run and long-run savings motives to describe differences in savings, saving rates and wealth accumulation.
The Uncontrolled Social Utility Hypothesis Revisited
No full textThe experiment disentangles communication and social effect in face−to−face communication. The results question the previous interpretation of communication effects in ultimatum bargaining, and suggest that separate processes, both of a strategic and of an affective−social nature induce cooperative outcomes.
Overconfident but yet well-calibrated and underconfident: A research note on judgmental miscalibration and flawed self-assessment*
No full textThe present paper addresses the question whether overconfidence is an individually stable phenomenon. A within-subjects design was used to investigate whether judgmental miscalibration also reflects tendency to make flawed self-assessments. While the former notion refers to the tendency of individuals to put unrealistic beliefs in their judgments, the latter concerns the tendency of individuals to make inaccurate evaluations of their abilities and performance. On the whole, the paper finds little support that those two tendencies should be related. Depending on the employed measurement, the participants were found to be simultaneously overconfident, well-calibrated, and underconfident.
Equivalence between best responses and undominated
No full textFor games with expected utility maximizing players whose strategy sets are finite, Pearce (1984) shows that a strategy is strictly dominated by some mixed strategy, if and only if, this strategy is not a best response to some belief about opponents' strategy choice. This note generalizes Pearce's (1984) equivalence result to games with expected utility maximizing players whose strategy sets are arbitrary compact sets.
Projection methods and scenarios for public and private pension information
No full textPublic pensions - the primary pillar of old-age income provision - will, in the future, be less generous than they have been in the past, in particular owing to the impact of demographic change. The pension gap is supposed to be plugged by the second and third pillars of pension provision. However, people require reliable planning information if they are to exercise greater individual responsibility. It is therefore absolutely essential that adequate information is made available about the level of pension benefits that will be generated by each pillar of old-age pension provision. This paper outlines a number of different means of presenting the level of future pensions and the assumptions on which such extrapolations are necessarily based. Our work is based on an assumed average rate of inflation of 1.5% and an average rate of real income growth not exceeding 1.5%. This last figure is derived from calculations made in the framework of a macroeconomic simulation model. This model also shows that while the funded pillar of old-age pension provision is not entirely immune to population aging, it is not substantially threatened by a substantial decrease in stock market prices, the so-called "asset meltdown".
Household Composition and Savings: An Overview
No full textIn recent years the literature on household saving behavior has been enriched by a number of contributions focusing on the problem of modeling a household as a single decision unit. It has reasonably been argued that with respect to household consumption and saving behavior the simple approach of modeling households as one representative decider could involve major mistakes. Thus the literature has enriched the basic model by incorporating variables that describe the composition of a household examples being the number and age of children, household member�s life expectancies and the intra-household distribution of income. This paper reviews these developments and empirical results in the latest literature, with a particular focus on intra-household income distributions.
Household Saving in Germany : Results from SAVE 2001-2003
No full textThis paper presents selected highlights drawn from the German SAVE surveys in 2001 and 2003, expanding the findings of Börsch-Supan and Essig (2003) along three lines. First, it analyses the households' assessment of their general, economic and financial well-being in the past, present and future. Second, it reports findings for the respondents' information level on, and expectations about, the public pension system. Third, it presents answers to a newly developed set of questions about risk. Specifically, it tests the reliability of the experimental question design and links self-assessed risk to respondents' financial behavior
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