time orientation and asset prices we analyze a general equilibrium asset pricing model where a small subset of the consumers investors have a short run urge to save that is their attitude toward consumption in the long run is a standard one f they do place zero weight on consumption far enough out in the future f but their short run effective rates of discount may be negative our model which is an elaboration on the framework proposed by faruk gul and wolfgang pesendorfer does not feature time inconsistencies thus we view consumers as fully rational but subject to specific internal frictions in the form of temptation and self control problems the model nests the mehra prescott model and we use it as a way of interpreting the wealth and asset pricing data some aspects of these data we argue can possibly be better understood using our model than the standard one r 2002 published by elsevier science b v

temptation and social security in a dynastic framework abstract we investigate welfare and aggregate implications of a pay as you go payg social security system in a dynastic framework in which individuals have self control problems the presence of self control problems induces individuals to save less because of their urge for temptation towards current consumption individuals efforts to balance between the short term urge for temptation and the long term commitment for consumption smoothing result in self control costs in this environment payg social security works as a self control cost reducing device in contrast the presence of altruism induces individuals to save more this in turn mitigates the adverse effects of self control problems and payg social security on savings but magnifies the self control costs we find that in our environment the adverse welfare effects of a payg system are further mitigated relative to the environments that incorporate altruism and self control issues separately however the level of mitigation is quite modest

a new year a new you within individual variation in food purchases abstract we document that within individual variation in food choices is substantial and has potentially important consequences for nutrition and hence well being we develop an approach that allows us to study the determinants of this within individual variation within an economic framework and allow for across individual preference heterogeneity we show that around one fifth of within individual fluctuations in diet quality is explained by standard economic variables prices and budgets along with advertising and weather the residual fluctuations are important and are larger for lower income and younger people and individuals who state they are impulsive we propose a two selves model of food purchase behavior to structurally interpret these empirical patterns we use nonparametric revealed preference techniques to show that this model rationalizes our food purchase data

wealth accumulation over the life cycle and precautionary savings this article constructs and simulates a life cycle model of wealth accumulation and estimates the parameters of the utility function the rate of time preference and the coefficient of risk aversion by matching the simulated median wealth profiles with those observed in the panel study of income dynamics and in the survey of consumer finances the estimates imply a low degree of patience and a high degree of risk aversion the results are used to study the importance of precautionary savings in explaining wealth accumulation they imply that wealth accumulation is driven mostly by precautionary motives at the beginning of the life cycle whereas savings for retirement purposes become significant only closer to retirement

the hyperbolic consumption model calibration simulation and empirical evaluation ur preferences for the long run tend to conflict with our short run behavior when planning for the long run we intend to meet our deadlines exercise regularly and eat healthfully but in the short run we have little interest in revising manuscripts jogging on the stairmaster and skipping the chocolate souffleala mode delay of gratification is a nice long term goal but instant gratification is disconcertingly tempting this gap between long run intentions and short run actions is apparent across a wide range of behaviors including saving choices a 1997 survey found that 76 percent of respondents believe they should be saving more for retirement looking only at respondents who believed they were at an age where you should be seriously saving already the survey found that 55 percent reported being behind in their savings and only 6 percent reported being ahead farkas and johnson 1997 the report on the survey concluded t he gaps between people s atti tudes intentions and behavior are troubling and threaten increased insecurity and dissatisfaction for people when they retire americans are simply not doing what logic and their own reasoning suggests they should be doing a 1993 luntz webber merrill lynch survey found similar answers when baby boomers were asked what percentage of your annual household income do you think you should save for retirement and what percentage of your annual

a moral basis for corporate philanthropy the authors argue that corporate philanthropy is far too important as a social instrument for good to depend on ethical egoism for its support they claim that rule utilitarianism provides a more compelling though not exclusive moral foundation the authors cite empirical and legal evidence as additional support for their claim

the nature of precautionary wealth abstract this paper uses the panel study of income dynamics to provide some of the first direct evidence that wealth is systematically higher for consumers with predictably greater income uncertainty however the apparent pattern of precautionary wealth is not consistent with a standard parameterization of the life cucle model in which consumers are patient enough to begin saving for retirement early in life wealth is estimated to be far less sensitive to uncertainty than implied by that model instead our results suggest that over most of their working life time consumers behave in accordance with the buffer stock models of saving described in carroll 1992 1997 or deaton 1991 in which consumers hold wealth principally to insulate consumption against near term fluctuations in income

the governance of non governmental organizations in uganda summary using original survey data we document the activities resources and governance structure of ngos operating in uganda the ngo sector is funded primarily by international non governmental organizations and bilateral donors we find large differences in size and funding across ngos with only a few ngos attracting most of the funding most ngos are small and underfunded and focus on raising awareness and advocacy few ngos are faith based most screening and monitoring is done by grant agencies some monitoring is also done internally by members and trustees little monitoring is done by government ngos do not file income tax returns and few respondents are able to provide coherent financial accounts

estimating temptation and commitment over the life cycle this paper estimates the importance of temptation gul and pesendorfer 2001 for consumption smoothing and asset accumulation in a structural life cycle model we use two complementary estimation strategies rst we estimate the euler equation of this model and second we match liquid and illiquid wealth accumulation using the method of simulated moments we nd that the utility cost of temptation is one quarter of the utility bene t of consumption further we show that allowing for temptation is crucial for correctly estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution estimates of the eis are substantially higher than without temptation finally our method of simulated moments estimation is able to match well the life cycle accumulation pro les for both liquid and illiquid wealth only if temptation is part of the preference speci cation our ndings on the importance of temptation are robust to the di erent estimation strategies revised july 2020

buffer stock saving in retirement accounts abstract we use a dynamic programming model to explore the possibility and extent of precautionary saving in tax sheltered accounts such as the 401 k the main policy experiment examines the behavior of saving for different levels of unemployment insurance ui which is a perfect substitute for precautionary saving against job loss our results indicate that increasing the generosity of ui crowds out 401 k contributions made by younger workers who save primarily for precautionary reasons at the aggregate level we find that 401 k s increase national saving and that the magnitude of the effect depends on the generosity of ui

corporate philanthropic giving advertising intensity and industry competition level this article examines whether the likelihood and amount of firm charitable giving in response to catastrophic events are related to firm advertising intensity and whether industry competition level moderates this relationship using data on chinese firms philanthropic response to the 2008 sichuan earthquake we find that firm advertising intensity is positively associated with both the probability and the amount of corporate giving the results also indicate that this positive advertising intensity philanthropic giving relationship is stronger in competitive industries and firms in competitive industries are more likely to donate this study thus provides evidence suggesting that even in the wake of catastrophic events corporate philanthropic giving is strategic

expectations based reference dependent life cycle consumption this study incorporates a recent preference specification of expectations based loss aversion which has been applied broadly in microeconomics into a classic macro model to offer a unified explanation for three empirical observations about life cycle consumption first loss aversion explains excess smoothness and sensitivity that is the empirical observation that consumption responds to income shocks with a lag intuitively such lagged responses allow the agent to delay painful losses in consumption until his expectations have adjusted secondly the preferences generate a hump shaped consumption profile early in life consumption is low due to a first order precautionary savings motive however as uncertainty resolves over time this motive is dominated by time inconsistent overconsumption that eventually leads to declining consumption towards the end of life thirdly consumption drops at retirement prior to retirement the agent wants to overconsume his uncertain income before his expectations catch up post retirement however income is no longer uncertain and overconsumption is associated with a sure loss in future consumption as an empirical contribution i structurally estimate the preference parameters using life cycle consumption data my estimates match those obtained in experiments and other micro studies and generate the degree of excess smoothness observed in macro consumption data

the role of intergenerational transfers and life cycle saving in the accumulation of wealth he purpose of this paper is to review what economists know at present about the following question how large a portion of the existing wealth is the result of a bequest motive that is of accumulation for the specific purpose of leaving bequests i will also endeavor to clarify why an answer to this question is of interest in the early keynesian period when the study of national saving first attracted wide interest relatively little attention was paid to what led people to save though it was generally understood that the main systematic reason was to leave bequests j m keynes in the famous chapter 9 of the general theory of employment interest and money 1936 had listed seven distinct motives for saving besides the leaving of bequests but five of these which include to increase one s future income or to insure one s independence and power implied that all or nearly all the accumulation would finally wind up as bequeathed wealth this in turn meant that most private wealth originated through bequests that is it either had been received through bequests or was destined to be bequeathed and indeed how else could society accumulate wealth however keynes 1936 p 107 also mentioned two further motives precaution that is to build up a reserve against unforeseen contingencies and foresight that is to provide for an anticipated future relation between the income and the needs of the individual or his family different from that which exists in the present as for example in relation to old age family education or the maintenance of dependents these motives in contrast to most of the previous ones have the

temptation and self control some evidence and applications this paper studies the empirical relevance of temptation and self control using household level data from the consumer expenditure survey we construct an infinite horizon consumption savings model that allows but does not require temptation and self control in preferences in the presence of temptation a wealth consumption ratio in addition to consumption growth becomes a determinant of the asset pricing kernel and the importance of this additional pricing factor depends on the strength of temptation to identify the presence of temptation we exploit an implication of the theory that a more tempted individual should be more likely to hold commitment assets such as individual retirement account ira or 401 k accounts our estimation provides empirical support for temptation preferences based on our estimates we explore some quantitative implications of this class of preferences for capital accumulation in a neoclassical growth model and the welfare cost of the business cycle

saving and liquidity constraints this paper is concerned with the theory of saving when consumers are not permitted to borrow and with the ability of such a theory to account for some of the stylized facts of saving behavior the models presented in the paper seem to account for important aspects of reality that are not explained by traditional life cycle models copyright 1991 by the econometric society

social security and self control preferences abstract we analyze the welfare effects of an unfunded social security system we do so using an overlapping generations economy wherein agents have self control preferences face mortality risk individual income risk and borrowing constraints given our specification of preferences unfunded social security helps reduce the agents temptation to consume in every period consequently the welfare costs it otherwise entails are substantially mitigated while both social security and self control when considered separately reduce welfare their combination renders this effect considerably less severe moreover if the cost of resisting temptation is very high the introduction of social security might even improve welfare

measuring self control problems we develop a survey instrument to measure self control problems in a sample of highly educated adults this measure relates in the manner that theory predicts to liquid wealth accumulation and personality measures yet while self control problems are typically seen as resulting in overconsumption and low wealth we identify a significant group who underconsume and thereby accumulate high levels of wealth in addition self control problems are smaller in scale for older than for younger respondents those who put money aside in retirement accounts may be delaying access to a point at which self control problems are no longer important jel d12 d14

corporate philanthropy in the u k 1985 2000 some empirical findings this paper briefly reviews the theories that seek to explain the phenomenon of corporate charitable donations and then provides a review of the empirical issues that have arisen in previous studies in this area the findings of an analysis of charitable donations data from the entire u k ftse index for the years 1985 2000 are then reported these findings include the observation of a time related increase in charitable donations which is compared with an earlier study to give a 24 year history of charitable donations in the u k the findings note little responsiveness of the monetary value of charitable donations to the economic performance of firms an international comparison over time against u s trends is also reported and shows how u s corporations have traditionally been more generous than u k firms but that the trend in the u s is downwards membership of a u k based tithing club the percent club is shown to be associated with higher profit performance against non members members charitable contributions against profit are shown to be higher than the ftse mean although short of the 0 5 target figure in cash terms the paper concludes with a brief discussion of these findings in relation to the theoretical positions advanced for corporate philanthropy

are americans saving optimally for retirement we solve each household s optimal saving decisions using a life cycle model that incorporates uncertain lifetimes uninsurable earnings and medical expenses progressive taxation government transfers and pension and social security benefits with optimal decision rules we compare household by household wealth predictions from the life cycle model using a nationally representative sample we find making use of household specific earnings histories that the model accounts for more than 80 percent of the 1992 cross sectional variation in wealth fewer than 20 percent of households have less wealth than their optimal targets and the wealth deficit of those who are undersaving is generally small

measuring self control problems a structural estimation we perform a structural estimation of the preference parameters in a buffer stock consumption model augmented with temptation disutility we adopt a two stage method of simulated moments methodology to match our simulated moments with those observed in the us survey of consumer finances to identify the parameters we use liquid and quasi liquid retirement wealth holdings at different ages as target moments we find evidence of a significantly positive degree of temptation and estimates under the unrestricted model are more precise than estimates under the restricted model with no temptation overall a model with temptation preferences explains better the observed target moments

the revealed preference theory of changing tastes we analyse preferences over finite decision problems in order to model decision makers with changing tastes we provide conditions on these preferences that identify the strotz model of consistent planning building on an example given by peleg and yaari 1973 we show that for problems with infinitely many choices strotz s representation of preferences may not be well defined for that case we propose a well defined approximation which is empirically indistinguishable from the strotz preference that is being approximated

social security reform with self control preferences abstract this paper analyzes a fully funded social security system under the assumption that agents face temptation issues agents are required to save through individually managed personal security accounts without and with mandatory annuitization when the analysis is restricted to crra preferences our results are congruent with the literature in indicating that the complete elimination of social security is among the reform scenarios that maximize welfare however when self control preferences are introduced and as the intensity of self control becomes progressively more severe the social security elimination scenario loses ground very rapidly in fact in the case of relatively severe temptation the elimination of social security becomes the least desirable alternative under the light of the above findings any reform proposal regarding the social security system should consider departures from standard preferences to preference specifications suitable for dealing with preference reversals

small is beautiful motivational allocation in the non profit sector we build an occupational choice general equilibrium model with for profit firms non profit organizations and endogenous private warm glow donations lack of monitoring on the use of funds implies that an increase of funds of the non profit sector because of a higher incomein the for profit sector a stronger preference for giving or an inflow of foreign aid worsens the motivational composition and performance of the non profit sector we also analyze the conditions under which donors through linking donations to the motivational composition of the non profit sector non profits themselves through peer monitoring or the government using a tax financed public funding of non profits can eliminate the low effectiveness equilibrium we present supporting case study evidence from humanitarian emergencies and developing country ngo sector and humanitarian emergencies

temptation and forward guidance abstract motivated by the extensive experimental and empirical evidence on preference reversal in consumption choices we introduce temptation with self control preferences into a new keynesian model to study the effects of forward guidance in monetary policy and the related forward guidance puzzle in our set up the representative agent faces a trade off between the temptation for immediate satisfaction liquidate wealth with his long run best smooth consumption which he manages by exerting cognitive effort or self control for higher risk aversion in temptation than in commitment utility there is discounting in the linearized euler equation the latter makes the response of current real activity to the announcement of a future policy change declining in the forward guidance horizon which then helps solving the puzzle our framework delivers testable aggregate and policy implications that distinguish it from alternative microfoundations for discounting in the euler equation previously used to solve the puzzle

household choices in equilibrium this paper is an empirical investigation of equilibrium restrictions on household consumption and male labor supply it exploits a simple factor structure rationalized by two assumptions that household allocations are pareto optimal and that the labor market is competitive the paper estimates household preferences and tests how well this parsimonious factor structure represents panel data on married couples and time series data on asset returns most of the estimates are roughly comparable to those found in previous work no evidence against the simple factor representation is found and the intertemporal capital asset pricing model is not rejected copyright 1990 by the econometric society

why do so few hold stocks the authors investigate why 75 percent of u s households do not hold stocks despite the equity premium and predictions of expected utility models the question is relevant for privatization asset pricing and tax progressivity issues they show that risk aversion per se heterogeneity of beliefs habit persistence time nonseparability and quantity constraints on borrowing do not account for the phenomenon a wedge between borrowing and lending rates and minimum investment requirements are plausible but empirically weak factors more promising explanations are inertia and departures from expected utility maximization there is also qualified support for nondiversifiable income risk as a contributing factor copyright 1995 by royal economic society

self control and the theory of consumption to study the behavior of agents who are susceptible to temptation in infinite horizon consumption problems under uncertainty we define and characterize dynamic self control dsc preferences dsc preferences are recursive and separable in economies with dsc agents equilibria exist but may be inefficient in such equilibria steady state consumption is independent of initial endowments and increases in self control increasing the preference for commitment while keeping self control constant increases the equity premium removing nonbinding constraints changes equilibrium allocations and prices debt contracts can be sustained even if the only feasible punishment for default is the termination of the contract

tying odysseus to the mast evidence from a commitment savings product in the philippines we designed a commitment savings product for a philippine bank and implemented it using a randomized control methodology the savings product was intended for individuals who want to commit now to restrict access to their savings and who were sophisticated enough to engage in such a mechanism we conducted a baseline survey on 1777 existing or former clients of a bank one month later we offered the commitment product to a randomly chosen subset of 710 clients 202 28 4 percent accepted the offer and opened the account in the baseline survey we asked hypothetical time discounting questions women who exhibited a lower discount rate for future relative to current trade offs and hence potentially have a preference for commitment were indeed significantly more likely to open the commitment savings account after twelve months average savings balances increased by 81 percentage points for those clients assigned to the treatment group relative to those assigned to the control group we conclude that the savings response represents a lasting change in savings and not merely a short term response to a new product

the spirit of capitalism and stock market prices in existing theory wealth is no more valuable than its implied consumption rewards in reality investors acquire wealth not just for its implied consumption but for the resulting social status max m weber 1958 refers to this desire for wealth as the spirit of capitalism the authors examine both analytically and empirically implications of weber s hypothesis for consumption savings and stock prices when investors care about relative social status propensity to consume and risk taking behavior will depend on social standards and stock prices will be volatile the spirit of capitalism seems to be a driving force behind stock market volatility and economic growth copyright 1996 by american economic association

the determinants of funding to ugandan nongovernmental organizations original ugandan data collected by the authors are used to examine the determinants of funding to local nongovernmental organizations ngos success in attracting grants from international donors depends mostly on network effects ngos that raise in kind resources locally tend to be young and managed by someone who is simultaneously employed elsewhere there is some evidence of crowding out ngos that receive grant funding are less likely to obtain resources locally whether in cash or in kind but this seems to be primarily the result of selection once ngo fixed effects are controlled for there is no evidence that ngos receive less revenue from fees and donation after obtaining a grant these results suggest that donors regard ugandan ngos as subcontractors of their development efforts not as charitable organizations in their own right

temptation driven behavior and taxation a quantitative analysis in a life cycle model i introduction a central research question in the dynamic fiscal policy literature during the last 30 years or so is whether under fairly general modeling choices the government should impose a positive tax on capital income in the long run the original answer to this question is negative and is due to the seminal papers by chamley 1986 and judd 1985 who established that in the context of a standard neoclassical growth model with infinitely lived individuals an optimal income tax policy entails taxing capital at confiscatory rates in the short run and setting capital income taxes equal to zero in the long run only labor income should be taxed in the long run since then several modeling choices that cast doubt on the validity of this result were identified in the literature imrohoroglu 1998 showed that the optimal capital income tax rate is strictly positive in an overlapping generations olg setting where individuals face idiosyncratic earnings risk borrowing constraints and life span uncertainty conesa kitao and krueger 2009 extended imrohoroglu 1998 by adding a labor leisure choice they demonstrated that the optimal capital income tax rate is equal to 36 and concluded that this high rate is mainly driven by the life cycle structure of the model in contrast krusell kuruscu and smith 2010 analytically showed that within a class of ramsey tax schemes the optimal capital income tax rate should be negative that is savings should be subsidized when agents have self control problems moreover in the special case where consumers succumb completely to temptation ramsey taxes deliver first best welfare outcomes and in contrast to the chamley judd result the optimum calls for a subsidy to savings however an integrated assessment of the combined effects of the relevant trade offs both along the dimension of differences in preferences and along the dimension of the scope of capital income taxation versus labor income taxation is missing from all previous studies in both social security and capital taxation literature and this paper aims to bridge the gap in the literature and contribute in this aspect to the best of our knowledge this paper is the first study that introduces temptation driven preferences in a quantitative model aiming to tackle the question on the optimal capital income tax before proceeding to specifically articulate this paper s contribution to the literature we consider critical to address a question that lies at the very core of our line of research namely why fiscal policy models with time inconsistent or self control preferences are relevant in the first place initially the literature pioneered by strotz 1956 and phelps and poliak 1968 corroborated evidence coming from both introspection and experiments that agents exhibit preference reversals as time passes different strands within this literature have suggested that these preference reversals could be induced by either time inconsistent preferences see laibson 1997 or self control preferences gul and pesendorfer 2004 time inconsistent preferences typically assume that agents have sequences of different selves each valuing consumption streams in a unique way in contrast gul and pesendorfer 2004 provide a dynamically consistent model suitable for addressing preference reversals that does not necessitate splitting up the consumer in multiple selves that is self control preferences these preferences describe an individual that in every period is tempted to consume his entire endowment when he consumes less than his endowment he incurs a disutility cost that stems from exercising self control that is self control cost optimal behavior trades off the temptation to consume vis a vis the long run self interest of the individual 1 alongside these theoretical underpinnings there is sound empirical and experimental evidence that agents suffer from self control problems