Essays on Government Policy and Household Financial Decisions

Essays on Government Policy and Household Financial Decisions PDF Author: Karen M. Pence
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book Here

Book Description

Essays on Government Policy and Household Financial Decisions

Essays on Government Policy and Household Financial Decisions PDF Author: Karen M. Pence
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book Here

Book Description


Essays on Saving, Bequests, Altruism, and Life-cycle Planning

Essays on Saving, Bequests, Altruism, and Life-cycle Planning PDF Author: Laurence J. Kotlikoff
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262263344
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 596

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of essays, coauthored with other distinguished economists, offers new perspectives on saving, intergenerational economic ties, retirement planning, and the distribution of wealth. The book links life-cycle microeconomic behavior to important macroeconomic outcomes, including the roughly 50 percent postwar decline in America's rate of saving and its increasing wealth inequality. The book traces these outcomes to the government's five-decade-long policy of transferring, in the form of annuities, ever larger sums from young savers to old spenders. The book presents new theoretical and empirical analyses of altruism that rule out the possibility that private intergenerational transfers have offset those by the government.While rational life-cycle behavior can explain broad economic outcomes, the book also shows that a significant minority of households fail to make coherent life-cycle saving and insurance decisions. These mistakes are compounded by reliance on conventional financial planning tools, which the book compares with Economic Security Planner (ESPlanner), a new life-cycle financial planning software program. The application of ESPlanner to U.S. data indicates that most Americans approaching retirement age are saving at much lower rates than they should be, given potential major cuts in Social Security benefits.

Essays on the Impacts of Household Financial Decision Making

Essays on the Impacts of Household Financial Decision Making PDF Author: George Simon Mihaylov
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Households
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
The thesis examines the consequences of household and individual financial decision making in three different areas: mortgages, superannuation and family businesses. The questions posed in each case cannot be tackled using conventional financial databases. I therefore address each case by applying survey methods. First, I examine the socioeconomic impacts of households choosing to take out shared appreciation mortgages (SAMs). Tax and regulatory barriers have impeded the development and use of SAMs in many mortgage markets. Empirical studies on household impacts stemming from SAMs have therefore also been limited. However, the State Government of South Australia has implemented SAMs as a means of enabling and encouraging low-income homeownership, thereby creating a unique dataset of SAM financed households. I survey this population, finding that SAM borrowers benefit from increased budgetary expenditure on discretionary items following take-up, while simultaneously saving on some non-discretionary items relative to control samples of renters and other homeowners from the general population. Furthermore, SAM homeownership also appears to be associated with increased levels of neighbourhood satisfaction and community involvement for borrowers. The results from this study indicate that SAM financed homeownership leads to changes in household behaviour and deserves further consideration by the housing industry and research community. Second, I examine the influence of investor knowledge and the cognitive bias which arises from overconfidence on the advice seeking behaviour of investors in self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs). I trace whether overestimating one's own technical and financial abilities can hinder the willingness to seek advice. I identify a subset of investors who are not knowledgeable and yet do not seek advice to compensate for this. These investors appear to be overconfident in their ability to manage their SMSF, despite holding under-diversified and less financially sophisticated portfolios when compared 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 findings. They suggest a need to identify and target self-managed retirement investors who display overconfidence since they are the most likely to manage under-performing SMSFs in the longer term. Third, I examine links between the succession planning decisions, operational management and financial performance of small-to-medium sized agricultural enterprises (SMAEs). I differentiate between written, verbal and other succession arrangements to investigate how each type embeds within the broader operational environment of SMAE households. Further tests are performed to see if differences in financial outcomes can be linked with a particular approach to succession. The results indicate that succession planning decisions are positively associated with the use of written business plans and crop insurance, but that this is only true for SMAEs with professionalised written succession arrangements. This was also the only cohort associated with improved return on assets relative to peer agricultural businesses with alternative succession arrangements in place. Given the critical role of succession in the long-term sustainability of family business households, these results have direct implications for farmers and practitioners advising the private agricultural sector. They suggest that the value in planning succession at least partly lies in the value of going down pathways for professionalization.

International Handbook of Financial Literacy

International Handbook of Financial Literacy PDF Author: Carmela Aprea
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811003602
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 708

Get Book Here

Book Description
This Handbook presents in-depth research conducted on a myriad of issues within the field of financial literacy. Split into six sections, it starts by presenting prevalent conceptions of financial literacy before covering financial literacy in the policy context, the state and development of financial literacy within different countries, issues of assessment and evaluation of financial literacy, approaches to teaching financial literacy, and teacher training and teacher education in financial literacy. In doing so, it provides precise definitions of the construct of financial literacy and elaborates on the state and recent developments of financial literacy around the world, to show ways of measuring and fostering financial literacy and to give hints towards necessary and successful teacher trainings. The book also embraces the diversity in the field by revealing contrasting and conflicting views that cannot be bridged, while at the same time making a contribution by re-joining existing materials in one volume which can be used in academic discourse, in research-workshops, in university lectures and in the definition of program initiatives within the wider field of financial literacy. It allows for a landscape of financial literacy to be depicted which would foster the implementation of learning opportunities for human beings for sake of well-being within financial living-conditions. The Handbook is useful to academics and students of the topic, professionals in the sector of investment and banking, and for every person responsible for managing his or her financial affairs in everyday life.

Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Model Rules of Professional Conduct PDF Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates
Publisher: American Bar Association
ISBN: 9781590318737
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

Building Assets, Building Credit

Building Assets, Building Credit PDF Author: Nicolas P. Retsinas
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815797842
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 413

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Brookings Institution Press and Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies publication Poor people spend their money living day to day. How can they accumulate wealth? In the United States, homeownership is often the answer. Homes not only provide shelter but also are assets, and thus a means to create equity. Mortgage credit becomes a crucial factor. More Americans than ever now have some access to credit. However. thanks in large part to the growth of global capital markets and greater use of "credit scores," not all homeowners have benefited equally from the opened spigots. Different terms and conditions mean that some applicants are overpaying for mortgage credit, while some are getting in over their heads. And the door is left wide open for predatory lenders. In this important new volume, accomplished analysts examine the situation, illustrate its ramifications, and recommend steps to improve it. Today, low-income Americans have more access to credit than ever before. The challenge is to increase the chances that homeownership becomes the new pathway to asset-building that everyone hopes it will be.

The Federal Reserve System Purposes and Functions

The Federal Reserve System Purposes and Functions PDF Author: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780894991967
Category : Banks and Banking
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Provides an in-depth overview of the Federal Reserve System, including information about monetary policy and the economy, the Federal Reserve in the international sphere, supervision and regulation, consumer and community affairs and services offered by Reserve Banks. Contains several appendixes, including a brief explanation of Federal Reserve regulations, a glossary of terms, and a list of additional publications.

Economic Dignity

Economic Dignity PDF Author: Gene Sperling
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984879898
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

Book Description
“Timely and important . . . It should be our North Star for the recovery and beyond.” —Hillary Clinton “Sperling makes a forceful case that only by speaking to matters of the spirit can liberals root their belief in economic justice in people’s deepest aspirations—in their sense of purpose and self-worth.” —The New York Times When Gene Sperling was in charge of coordinating economic policy in the Obama White House, he found himself surprised when serious people in Washington told him that the Obama focus on health care was a distraction because it was “not focused on the economy.” How, he asked, was the fear felt by millions of Americans of being one serious illness away from financial ruin not considered an economic issue? Too often, Sperling found that we measured economic success by metrics like GDP instead of whether the economy was succeeding in lifting up the sense of meaning, purpose, fulfillment, and security of people. In Economic Dignity, Sperling frames the way forward in a time of wrenching change and offers a vision of an economy whose guiding light is the promotion of dignity for all Americans.

U.S. Health in International Perspective

U.S. Health in International Perspective PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309264146
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421

Get Book Here

Book Description
The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.

The Financial Diaries

The Financial Diaries PDF Author: Jonathan Morduch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691172986
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book Here

Book Description
Drawing on the groundbreaking U.S. Financial Diaries project (http://www.usfinancialdiaries.org/), which follows the lives of 235 low- and middle-income families as they navigate through a year, the authors challenge popular assumptions about how Americans earn, spend, borrow, and save-- and they identify the true causes of distress and inequality for many working Americans.