Risk perception and framing of financial decisions during the payout phase of retirement

退休支付阶段的风险认知和财务决策框架

• 批准号: 364999955
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Sven Nolte
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Califonia Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Fellowships
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2018-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/364999955?language=en
• 关键词: Risk; perception; framing; financial; decisions

Retirement savings decisions are among the most important decisions of private households due to their severe financial consequences. In recent years, responsibility for retirement savings has been shifted from public pension systems towards those households. The complexity of decisions in the context of retirement provisions presents many people with problems, so that behavioral research has gained importance in this field. Most of this research deals with the savings phase. Much less studied, albeit more and more relevant considering ageing populations, is the payout phase, i.e., the time after the working life. Here, households also face difficult decisions but have to deal with additional, unfamiliar risk types. The focus of this research project are two specific risk types: inflation risk and longevity risk. Inflation risk is particularly relevant during the payout phase, as there is no human capital left to counteract the devaluation of money. Longevity risk describes the risk of living so long that the saved capital is used up and there is no available income left. Although annuities provide an effective insurance against this risk, they are purchased much less often than standard economic theory would predict. Recent research suggests that this phenomenon – known as annuity puzzle – has a behavioral explanation based on the specific framing of the decision situation. Households do not perceive annuities as insurance products, but rather as a gamble on the length of one’s own life. An annuity would then not reduce but add risk, namely the risk of getting back less than the invested capital. In this context, ambiguity aversion and loss aversion play an important role. Both phenomena have been investigated thoroughly in the judgement and decision making literature, but not much is known about what their effect is in the specific dynamic setting of the payout phase. Here, ambiguity does not concern the uncertainty regarding the size of returns, but instead the uncertainty regarding longevity and thus the time length of payments. The goal of this research project is to uncover, understand, and explain systematic biases and mistakes in decision making during the payout phase of retirement by means of behavioral and experimental research. Ambiguity aversion and loss aversion in the context of framing are the focus of the analyses. For this purpose, annuities as well as specific product characteristics and features like inflation protection and nominal capital guarantees are investigated.

由于其严重的财务后果，退休储蓄决定是私人家庭最重要的决定之一。近年来，退休储蓄的责任已从公共铅笔系统转移到这些家庭。在退休规定的背景下，决策的复杂性表现出许多有问题的人，因此行为研究在这一领域已变得重要。这项研究的大部分涉及储蓄阶段。研究型人口越来越少，尽管越来越重要，但薪水阶段，即工作寿命之后的时间。在这里，家庭也面临艰难的决定，但必须处理其他陌生的风险类型。该研究项目的重点是两种特定的风险类型：通货膨胀风险和寿命风险。在支出阶段，通货膨胀风险特别重要，因为没有人力资本来抵消金钱的定义。长寿风险描述了寿命这么长的风险，以至于保存的资本被用完了，没有可用的收入。尽管年金为这种风险提供了有效的保险，但它们的购买频率远低于标准经济理论所预测的。最近的研究表明，这种现象（称为年金难题）具有基于决策情况的特定框架的行为解释。家庭不会将年金视为保险产品，而是将自己的寿命赌博。然后，年金不会降低，而是增加风险，即恢复低于投资资本的风险。在这种情况下，歧义的厌恶和损失厌恶起着重要的作用。在判断和决策文献中都对两种现象进行了彻底的研究，但是对它们在支出阶段的特定动态环境中的影响并不多。在这里，模棱两可并不涉及有关回报规模的不确定性，而是关于寿命的不确定性以及付款时间的不确定性。该研究项目的目的是通过行为和实验研究在退休付款阶段揭示，理解和解释决策的系统偏见和错误。在框架背景下，歧义性厌恶和损失厌恶是分析的重点。为此，研究了年金以及特定的产品特征以及通货膨胀保护和名义资本保证等功能。