Stefan Hochguertel

OWNERSHIP OF STOCKS AND MUTUAL FUNDS: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

This paper analyzes the ownership dynamics of stocks and mutual funds, using representative household panel data, the Dutch CentER Savings Survey 19931998. A bivariate dynamic binary-choice model is introduced, allowing for interactions between the two types of assets. We find that unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence play a large role for both types of assets. The positive relation between ownership of one type in one period and the other type in the next period is explained by correlated unobserved heterogeneity. A negative state-dependence effect of lagged ownership of stocks on ownership of mutual funds is found, which can be explained by the costs of shifting funds across the two forms of stockholding.

Consumer Credit: Evidence from Italian Micro Data

In this paper we analyse unique data on credit applications received by the leading provider of consumer credit in Italy (Findomestic). The data set covers a five-year period (1995-1999) during which the consumer credit market rapidly expanded in Italy and a new law (the usury law) came into force that set a limit on interest rates charged to consumers. We compute behavioural changes by controlling for changes in the observable characteristics of the Findomestic clientele and argue that, under suitable identifying assumptions, these changes can be given a structural interpretation. If the usury shock is assumed to have affected credit supply but not credit demand-that is, if the usury law had a differential impact on the supply of various types of credit but a uniform impact on demand-then we can identify and estimate a demand equation. Our key finding is that demand is interest-rate elastic, particularly in the more affluent North. (JEL: D14, E21, G21) Copyright (c) 2005 by the European Economic Association.

US and European Household Debt and Credit Constraints

This paper uses micro data from four OECD countries (the United States, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands), to assess the determinants of household debt holding and to investigate whether or not credit constraints are important for household debt holding. We extend the existing literature in important ways. First, we present comparative evidence for four countries at the micro level, where we rely on household panel data for two countries; we are thus able to control for unobserved heterogeneity via individual household effects and to track changes in household behaviour over time. Second, by making data across countries as comparable as possible, we can explore the importance of the differences in institutional settings for debt incidence, debt outstanding and credit constraints. We also explore the implications for debt holding from consumption models, including a numerically solved precautionary savings model. We find that inter-country differences are substantial and remain even after controlling for a host of observable characteristics. This points to institutional differences between the countries being important.

Household debt and credit: Economic issues and data problems

We survey contributions to the analysis of household liabilities, highlighting relevant theoretical aspects and outlining how data sources may support empirical testing and measurement efforts. Specifically, we classify aspects of household debt, discussing the theoretical and policy relevance of heterogeneity across individual and country dimensions. Aiming to illustrate conceptual and measurement issues, we refer to the approaches and results of some recent relevant country-specific work on administrative and survey data, and we argue that research in this area would greatly benefit from availability of appropriately classified household liabilities data and of cross-country institutional information.

Who is at the Top? Wealth Mobility Over the Life Cycle

Who is wealthy? This paper presents empirical estimates of household movements into and out of the top percents of the wealth distribution over individual life cycles. There are life-cycle motives and precautionary motives for wealth accumulation. The opportunities to accumulate wealth create incentives for education, work effort, and entrepreneurship. We would expect considerable wealth mobility over the life cycle if the life-cycle motives and incentives to accumulate are strong and affect behavior. The data are from an administrative Swedish source that retains wealth information from tax registers. The data are unique, they follow a large sample of households over almost 40 years. There is substantial mobility when we follow individual households over long enough time spans. We find that wealth mobility increased until the end of the 1980s and then started to decrease. Age-wealth probability profiles are consistent with life-cycle motives for wealth accumulation. There are also limited precautionary motives for wealth accumulation when households experience income uncertainty.

Gradual Retirement in the Netherlands: An Analysis Using Administrative Data.

Gradual retirement by which individuals leave their career jobs and withdraw incrementally from the labor force is an important empirical phenomenon in the United States. We analyze the current state of gradual retirement in the Netherlands using administrative data that allow much more precise tracking of labor market transitions than most survey panel data. We estimate multinomial transition models, taking into account competing pathways out of career employment at older ages, and discuss institutional aspects that limit the scope of gradual retirement, such as financial incentives to retire early.

Self-Employment Around Retirement Age

This paper uses panel data from the pan-European SHARE survey to study labor market behavior of older male self-employed vis-a-vis wage employed workers. We find the self-employed to work longer hours, to be more flexible in their hours allocation, and to retire later in all countries. We relate these differences in observed behavior to individual characteristics, economic resources, and to documented cross-national variation in labor market and social security institutions. Differential incentives matter for the retirement behavior of the self-employed. We also provide evidence of the self-employed not wanting to retire as early as possible, and contrast these expectation data with realized retirement transitions. The overall picture that emerges is that older self-employed have a very strong labor market attachment and they use their degrees of freedom to work more and retire later accordingly.

Job Loss, Firm-Level Heterogeneity and Mortality: Evidence from Administrative Data

This paper estimates the effect of job loss on mortality for older male workers with a strong labor force attachment. Using Dutch administrative data, we find that job loss due to firm closure increased the probability of death within five years by a sizable 0.60 percentage points. Importantly, this effect is estimated using a model that controls for firm-level worker characteristics, such as lagged firm-level annual average mortality rates. On the mechanism driving the effect of job loss on mortality, we provide evidence for an effect running through stress and changes in life style.

Joint Retirement of Couples: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

We estimate and explain the impact of early retirement of husbands on their wives’ probability to retire within one year, using administrative micro panel data that cover the whole Dutch population. We employ an instrumental variable approach in which the retirement choice of husbands is instrumented with eligibility rules for generous early retirement benefits that were temporarily and unexpectedly available to them. We find that early retirement opportunities of husbands increased the wives’ probability to retire by 24.6 percentage points. This is a strong, and robust effect. Partly, wives respond to husbands’ choices at ages when they are themselves likely eligible for early retirement programs.

Stockholding in the Netherlands

This chapter details the trends in (in) direct stockownership and in portfolio shares of different types of risky assets conditional upon ownership in the Netherlands over much of the past decade, and tries to identify some of the main driving forces of household investment behaviour. We use descriptive evidence from macro data sources to show overall trends in household sector portfolio composition. To identify the economic and demographic characteristics of the average household we use a recent micro data set that follows individual households over time. This CentER Savings Survey (CSS), administered in close cooperation with economists and other academics studying saving behaviour, is an extraordinary rich source of information that not only reflects the major trends in financial markets for the private household sector, but also allows inference on which household characteristics are associated with level and composition of financial portfolios