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Is There a Retirement-Consumption Puzzle? Evidence Using Subjective Retirement Expectations

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Author Info
Steven J Haider (Department of Economics, Michigan State University)
Melvin Stephens (H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, and National Bureau of Economic Research)

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Abstract

Previous research finds a systematic decrease in consumption at retirement, a finding that is inconsistent with the life cycle/permanent income hypothesis if retirement is an expected event. In this paper, we use workers' subjective beliefs about their retirement dates as an instrument for retirement. After demonstrating that subjective retirement expectations are strong predictors of subsequent retirement decisions, we still find a consumption decline at retirement for workers who retire when expected. However, our estimates of this consumption fall are about a third less than those found when we instead rely on the instrumental variables strategy used in prior studies. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/rest.89.2.247
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Publisher Info
Article provided by MIT Press in its journal The Review of Economics and Statistics.

Volume (Year): 89 (2007)
Issue (Month): 2 (03)
Pages: 247-264
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Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:89:y:2007:i:2:p:247-264

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
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  5. Jeff Dominitz, 1998. "Earnings Expectations, Revisions, And Realizations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(3), pages 374-388, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Christopher D Carroll, 1997. "Death to the Log-Linearized Consumption euler Equation! (And Very Poor Health to the Second-Order Approximation)," Economics Working Paper Archive 390, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  8. Hamermesh, Daniel S, 1984. "Consumption during Retirement: The Missing Link in the Life Cycle," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 66(1), pages 1-7, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. B. Douglas Bernheim & Jonathan Skinner & Steven Weinberg, 2001. "What Accounts for the Variation in Retirement Wealth among U.S. Households?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 832-857, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. Chamberlain, Gary, 1984. "Panel data," Handbook of Econometrics, in: Z. Griliches† & M. D. Intriligator (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 22, pages 1247-1318 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Michael Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2004. "The Retirement-Consumption Puzzle: Anticipated and Actual Declines in Spending at Retirement," Working Papers wp069, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center. [Downloadable!]
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  13. Robert E. Hall & Frederic S. Mishkin, 1982. "The Sensitivity of Consumption to Transitory Income: Estimates from Panel Data on Households," NBER Working Papers 0505, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Kathryn Anderson & Richard V. Burkhauser & Joseph F. Quinn, 1986. "Do retirement dreams come true? The effect of unanticipated events on retirement plans," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, ILR School, Cornell University, vol. 39(4), pages 518-526, July.
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  17. Michael D. Hurd, 1992. "Wealth Depletion and Life-Cycle Consumption by the Elderly," NBER Chapters, in: Topics in the Economics of Aging, pages 135-162 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
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  18. V. Kerry Smith & Donald H. Taylor Jr. & Frank A. Sloan, 2001. "Longevity Expectations and Death: Can People Predict Their Own Demise?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1126-1134, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  19. Shelly Lundberg & Richard Startz & Steven Stillman, 2001. "The Retirement-Consumption Puzzle: A Marital Bargaining Approach," Working Papers 01-04, RAND Corporation Publications Department. [Downloadable!]
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  20. Michael D. Hurd & Kathleen McGarry, 1997. "The Predictive Validity of Subjective Probabilities of Survival," NBER Working Papers 6193, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  21. John Ameriks & Andrew Caplin & John Leahy, 2002. "Retirement Consumption: Insights from a Survey," NBER Working Papers 8735, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Richard Disney & Sarah Tanner, 1999. "What can we learn from retirement expectations data?," IFS Working Papers W99/17, Institute for Fiscal Studies. [Downloadable!]
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  24. George-Marios Angeletos et al., 2001. "The Hyberbolic Consumption Model: Calibration, Simulation, and Empirical Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 47-68, Summer. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Erich Battistin & Agar Brugiavini & Enrico Rettore & Guglielmo Weber, 2008. "The retirement consumption puzzle: evidence from a regression discontinuity approach," IFS Working Papers W08/05, Institute for Fiscal Studies. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Midori Wakabayashi, 2008. "The retirement consumption puzzle in Japan," Journal of Population Economics, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 983-1005, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. John Laitner & Dan Silverman, 2005. "Estimating Life—Cycle Parameters from Consumption Behavior at Retirement”," Working Papers wp099, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. David M. Blau, 2007. "Retirement and Consumption in a Life Cycle Model," IZA Discussion Papers 2986, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Mauro Mastrogiacomo, 2006. "Testing consumers' asymmetric reaction to wealth changes," CPB Discussion Papers 53, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. [Downloadable!]
  6. Michael D. Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2006. "Some Answers to the Retirement-Consumption Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 12057, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  7. Daniel S. Hamermesh & Joel Slemrod, 2005. "The Economics of Workaholism: We Should Not Have Worked on This Paper," IZA Discussion Papers 1680, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  8. Andrew Au & Olivia S. Mitchell & John W.R. Phillips, 2005. "Saving Shortfalls and Delayed Retirement," Working Papers wp094, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center. [Downloadable!]
  9. Mauro Mastrogiacomo & Nicole Voskuilen-Bosch, 2006. "Income incentives to labour participation and home production; the contribution of the tax credits in the Netherlands," CPB Discussion Papers 59, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. [Downloadable!]
  10. José M. Labeaga & Rubén Osuna, 2007. "Expenditures at retirement by Spanish households," Working Papers 2007-36, FEDEA. [Downloadable!]
  11. Michael Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2005. "Changes in Consumption and Activities at Retirement," DNB Working Papers 039, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  12. Erik Hurst, 2008. "The Retirement of a Consumption Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 13789, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. John Laitner & Daniel Silverman, 2006. "Consumption, Retirement, and Social Security: Evaluating the Efficiency of Reform with a Life-Cycle Model," Working Papers wp142, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center. [Downloadable!]
  14. Bakken, Line Smart, 2006. "The Golden Age of Retirement," Memorandum 22/2006, Oslo University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  15. Hugo Benítez-Silva & Debra S. Dwyer, 2003. "Expectation Formation of Older Married Couples and the Rational Expectations Hypothesis," Working Papers wp062, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  16. Mark Aguiar & Erik Hurst, 2004. "Consumption vs. Expenditure," NBER Working Papers 10307, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Mette Gørtz, 2006. "Heterogeneity in Preferences and Productivity – Implications for Retirement," CAM Working Papers 2006-01, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Applied Microeconometrics. [Downloadable!]
  18. Steven Haider & Mel StephensJr., 2006. "How Accurate are Expected Retirement Savings?," Working Papers wp128, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center. [Downloadable!]
  19. Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2004. "Subjective Outcomes in Economics," NBER Working Papers 10361, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
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