The aims of this project are (1) to develop new survey measures of preferences; (2) to gain a better understanding of altruism and its implications of interpersonal transfers, wealth accumulation, portfolio choice, and other aspects of behavior; (3) to gain a better understanding of retirement and labor supply; (4) to gain a better understanding of risk preference and its implications for portfolio choice; (5) to develop methodologies for expanding the domain of quantities that can be measured by surveys; and (6) to apply these measures, understandings and methodologies to analyzing the welfare and behavioral consequences of reforms to Social Security and other social insurance programs for the elderly. The fundamentals of economic analysis are preferences, constraints, and information structures. This project focuses on the measurement of preferences. Of the preference parameters identified by economic theory, among the most central are those controlling interpersonal preference (altruism) labor supply preference, at risk preference, and intertemporal preference. The objective of the continuing research program encompassing this project is to make preference parameters such as these operationally observable quantities. Altruism is central to the functional of families and other social networks, which in turn are central to the functioning of the economy and much else in society. Labor supply preferences in general, and preferences relating to retirement in particular, bulk large in determining the life histories of individuals and in determining the functioning of the economy as a whole. Risk preference, time preference, and intertemporal substitution are also of considerable importance. The proposed research aims at clarifying the magnitudes and cross- sectional distributions of familial and extra-familial altruism, the interpersonal elasticity of substitution, the wealth elasticity of labor, the temporary wage elasticity of labor supply, and the permanent wage elasticity of labor supply. Two other objectives are clarifying the relationship of altruism to behavior and clarifying the relationship of each labor supply parameter to the retirement transition.
| Shapiro, Matthew D; Slemrod, Joel (2009) Did the 2008 Tax Rebates Stimulate Spending? Am Econ Rev 99:374-379 |
| Kimball, Miles; Weil, Philippe (2009) Precautionary Saving and Consumption Smoothing Across Time and Possibilities. J Money Credit Bank 41:245-284 |
| Kimball, Miles S; Sahm, Claudia R; Shapiro, Matthew D (2008) Imputing Risk Tolerance From Survey Responses. J Am Stat Assoc 103:1028-1038 |
