Experimental Research on Retirement Decision Making: Evidence from Replications

• Published in: Journal of Banking & Finance
• Main Authors: Bachmann, Kremena, Lot, Andre, Xu, Xiaogeng, Hens, Thorsten
• Other Authors: Economics, Helsinki
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: 511 Economics; Household finance; Retirement decision; Savings; Annuities; Life-cycle optimization; Income smoothing; Experiments; Replications; KOTA2023?; PREM2023_06; 1 - Publication available open access by the publisher; 2 - Hybrid open access publication channel; 1 - Self archived; http://hdl.handle.net/10227/561373; 1- Minst en av författarna har en utländsk affiliation; 1- Publicerad utomlands; 0- Ingen affiliation med ett företag; PRJ; 1,5; AACSB year; 2023; Tromsø
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10227/561373; http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85158877087&partnerID=8YFLogxK

Funding Information: We are grateful for the comments and suggestions of three anonymous referees, the special issue editors (Michael Kirchler and Utz Weitzel), Christian K.nig gen. Kersting, Thomas de Haan, and Alexander Ziegler; and the audiences at Financial Economics Colloquium at University of Zurich (2021), Experimental Finance conference in Bonn (2022), and FAIR Midway conference in Tromsø (2022). Financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation [grant number 100018_189107] is greatly acknowledged. Funding Information: We are grateful for the comments and suggestions of three anonymous referees, the special issue editors (Michael Kirchler and Utz Weitzel), Christian K.nig gen. Kersting, Thomas de Haan, and Alexander Ziegler; and the audiences at Financial Economics Colloquium at University of Zurich (2021), Experimental Finance conference in Bonn (2022), and FAIR Midway conference in Tromsø (2022). Financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation [grant number 100018_189107 ] is greatly acknowledged. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s) We adapt the design of five experimental studies on retirement decision making and conduct replications with a larger sample from the broader population. We replicate most of the main effects of the original studies. In particular, we find that consumption decisions are less efficient when subjects need to borrow from the future than when they need to save from the present. When subjects collect retirement benefits as lump sum instead of annuities, they choose to retire later. The duration of retirement affects the saving behavior of the subjects. Savings are higher when they are incentivized with matching contributions than when incentivized with tax rebates. When faced with varying survival risk, subjects make partial adjustments to spending paths. We also propose a further experimental research agenda in related topics and discuss practical issues on subject recruitment, attrition, and redesign of complex tasks. Peer reviewed