Using data from a randomized experiment in rural China, this paper studies the influence of social networks on weather insurance adoption and the mechanisms through which social networks operate. To quantify network effects, the experiment provides financial education to a random subset of farmers. For untreated farmers, the effect of having an additional treated friend on take- up is equivalent to offering a 15% reduction in the insurance premium. By varying the information available about peers’ decisions and using randomized default options, the experiment shows that the positive social network effect is not driven by the diffusion of information on purchase decisions, but instead by the diffusion of knowledge about insurance. We also find that social network effects are larger when people who are the first to receive financial education are more central in the social network.

Do retirement savings policies – such as tax subsidies or employer-provided pension plans – increase total saving for retirement or simply induce shifting across accounts? We revisit this classic question using 45 million observations on wealth for the population of Denmark. We find that a policy’s impact on wealth accumulation depends on whether it changes savings rates by active or passive choice. Tax subsidies, which rely upon individuals to take an action to raise savings, have small impacts on total wealth. We estimate that each $1 of tax expenditure on subsidies increases total saving by 1 cent. In contrast, policies that raise retirement contributions if individuals take no action – such as automatic employer contributions to retirement accounts – increase wealth accumulation substantially. Price subsidies only affect the behavior of active savers who respond to incentives, whereas automatic contributions increase the savings of passive individuals who do not reoptimize. We estimate that approximately 85% of individuals are passive savers. The 15% of active savers who respond to price subsidies do so primarily by shifting assets across accounts rather than reducing consumption. These individuals are also more likely to offset changes in automatic contributions and have higher wealth-income ratios. We conclude that automatic contributions are more effective at increasing savings rates than price subsidies for three reasons: (1) subsidies induce relatively few individuals to respond, (2) they generate substantial crowd-out conditional on response, and (3) they do not influence the savings behavior of passive individuals, who are least prepared for retirement.

This paper provides experimental evidence that individuals have difficulty valuing annuities, and this difficulty – rather than a preference for lump sums – can help explain observed low levels of annuity purchases. Although the median price at which people are willing to sell an annuity is close to median actuarial values, this masks notable heterogeneity in responses including substantial numbers of respondents whose responses are difficult to reconcile with optimizing behavior under any reasonable parameter assumptions. We also discover that people are willing to pay substantially less to buy a larger annuity, a result not due to liquidity constraints or endowment effects. Strikingly, we also learn that individual responses to the buy versus sell decisions are negatively correlated, an effect that is stronger for the less financially sophisticated. Our findings are consistent with boundedly rational consumers who adopt a “buy low, sell high” heuristic when faced with a complex trade-off. Moreover, at the margin, subjective valuations vary nearly one-for-one with actuarial values but are uncorrelated with utility-based measures designed to measure the insurance value of annuities. This supports the hypothesis that people use simplifying heuristics to think about annuities, rather than engaging in optimizing behavior. Results also underscore the difficulty of explaining the cross-sectional variation in annuity valuations using standard empirical models. Our findings raise doubt about whether most consumers can make optimal decisions about annuitization.

Howell Jackson is the James S. Reid, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. His research interests include financial regulation, international finance, consumer protection, federal budget policy, and entitlement reform. Professor Jackson has served as a consultant to the United States Treasury Department, the United Nations Development Program, and the World Bank/International Monetary Fund. He is a member of the National Academy on Social Insurance, a trustee of the College Retirement Equities Fund (CREF) and its affiliated TIAA-CREF investment companies, a member of the panel of outside scholars for the NBER Retirement Research Center, and a senior editor for Cambridge University Press Series on International Corporate Law and Financial Regulation. Professor Jackson frequently testifies before Congress and consults with government agencies on issues of financial regulation. He is co-editor of Fiscal Challenges: An Inter- Disciplinary Approach to Budget Policy (Cambridge University Press 2008), co- author of Analytical Methods for Lawyers (Foundation Press 2003) and Regulation of Financial Institutions (West 1999), and author of numerous scholarly articles. Before joining the Harvard Law School faculty in 1989, Professor Jackson was a law clerk for Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall and practiced law in Washington, D.C. Professor Jackson received J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Harvard University in 1982 and a B.A. from Brown University in 1976.

Abstract

Even though most American retirees benefit from Medicare coverage, a mounting body of research predicts many will face large and increasing out-of-pocket expenditures for healthcare costs in retirement and that many struggle to finance these costs. It is unclear, however, whether the general population understands the likely magnitude of these out-of-pocket expenditures well enough to plan for them effectively. This study is the first comprehensive examination of Americans’ expectations regarding their out-of-pocket spending on healthcare in retirement. We surveyed over 1700 near retirees and retirees to assess their expectations regarding their own spending and then compared their responses to experts’ estimates. Our main findings are twofold. First, overall expectations of out-of-pocket spending are mixed. While a significant proportion of respondents estimated out-of-pocket costs in retirement at or above expert estimates of what the typical retiree will spend, a disproportionate number estimated their future spending substantially below what experts view as likely. Estimates by members of some demographic subgroups, including women and younger respondents, deviated relatively further from the experts’ estimates. Second, respondents consistently misjudged spending uncertainty. In particular, respondents significantly underestimated how much individual health experience and changes in government policy can affect individual out-of-pocket spending. We discuss possible policy responses, including efforts to improve financial planning and ways to reduce unanticipated financial risk through reform of health insurance regulation.