Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Behavioral Responses to Wealth Shocks: Evidence from Sweden

工人在财务状况发生意外变化后如何为退休做准备？财富的突然变化如何影响退休前后的收入和健康？人们在投资组合出现意外损失后，是否会工作得更多，压力更大？人们是迅速地花掉新发现的财富，还是把它存起来？在家庭中人们互相帮助到什么程度？本研究解决了这些问题的经验与三个新的研究设计瑞典的完整的人口登记。该项目是第一个将这些数据用于此目的的项目，这对任何主要发达经济体来说都是一个独特的机会。主要设计使用的是从瑞典纳税申报表中非常详细的投资组合数据计算出的资本收益。风险较高的资产应产生较高的平均回报，较安全的投资应产生较低的平均回报，但高于或低于这些特定风险水平的已实现回报对一个人的财富和储蓄构成不可预测的冲击。辅助设计使用养老金和遗产税政策的急剧截止作为对财富的明显冲击。所有的设计都会导致对退休年龄、健康和幸福感等结果的调查，以及一个人的收入、消费或储蓄。此外，财富对劳动力供给或消费的因果影响也可以通过家庭成员来证明，这是一个非常重要的渠道，以前从未有可能使用整个国家的完整家庭网络进行研究。这项工作推进了我们对人类决策如何随着财富而变化的理解。研究的数据和冲击的性质都超过了以前使用调查的研究：其影响是在更广泛的人群中建立的，有更精确的数据（关于收入或消费），特别是关于新的结果（如健康）。最重要的是，丰富的数据不仅提供了精确性，而且还提供了具有更高内部有效性的新颖研究设计，即在财富变化接近随机的情况下进行清晰的比较。这项工作可以分析财富的负面冲击，这一事实使其从之前（或同时）关于彩票中奖或继承的工作中脱颖而出。尤其重要的是，要确定人们对损失的反应是否不同于相应的收益。此外，人们可以考虑改变他们的储蓄不同于意外之财的同等规模。此外，这项研究是第一个适当考虑溢出效应的研究，在这种情况下，家庭内部的帮助可能很重要，即储蓄或健康的“私人保险”。对一个国家基本完整的家庭网络进行研究，并提供同样可靠的数据，这本身就是一个重要的进步，许多结果可能具有更广泛的影响。例如，如果退休人员拥有更多的财富，他们的健康状况会更好，那么更强大的退休储蓄计划可能看起来是合理的。另一方面，如果富裕的人更容易离开工作岗位，那么对退休年龄进行经济状况调查可能会提高福利。如果即使在一个慷慨的福利国家，家庭帮助似乎仍然普遍存在，那么政策建议和其他实证研究都有望做出更大的努力来考虑这种溢出效应。更广泛的研究和政策界也关心人们对激励措施的反应，这取决于他们或他们的家庭成员是否富裕。

How do workers prepare for retirement after an unexpected change in their financial situation? How do sudden wealth changes affect earnings and health before and after retirement? Do people work more and become more stressed after unexpected losses in their portfolios? Do people spend down new-found wealth quickly, or do they save it? To what extent do people help each other out in the family? This study addresses these questions empirically with three novel research designs on Sweden's complete population registries. The project is the first to use this data for this purpose, a singular opportunity for any major developed economy in particular.The main design uses capital gains calculated from exceptionally detailed portfolio data in the universe of Swedish tax returns. Riskier assets should generate higher average returns, safer investments lower ones, but realized returns above or below these risk-specific levels constitute unpredictable shocks to one's wealth and savings. Auxiliary designs use sharp cutoffs in pension and inheritance tax policies as clear shocks to wealth. All designs lead to investigations of outcomes like the age of retirement, health and well-being, as well as what one earns, consumes or saves. Even more, the causal effects of wealth on labor supply or consumption can also be documented for family members -- a very important channel which has never been possible to study using the complete family network of an entire country before.This work advances our understanding of how human decisions change with wealth. Both the nature of the data and the shocks investigated surpass previous investigations using surveys: The effects are established in a much broader population, with more precise data (on earnings or consumption), and, in particular, on novel outcomes (like health). Most importantly, the rich data does not only offer precision, but also novel research designs with greater internal validity, i.e. clean comparisons of situations where the variation in wealth is close to random.The fact that this work can analyze negative shocks to wealth makes it stand out from prior (or concurrent) work on lottery winnings or inheritance. It is particularly important to establish whether people react to losses differently from commensurate gains. Also, people can think about changes to their savings unlike windfalls of equal size. Moreover, the study is among the first to properly take into account spillover effects where help can be important within the family, viz. "private insurance" of savings or health. A study with equally reliable data on the basically complete network of families in a country is an important advance in itself.Many results can have broader implications. For instance, if retirees are much healthier with some extra wealth, more powerful retirement saving schemes might look justified. On the other hand, if wealthier people leave work more easily, a means-tested retirement age might raise welfare. If family help still seem prevalent even in a generous welfare state, both policy proposals and other empirical studies can be expected to make bigger efforts to take such spillover effects into account. The wider research and policy community also cares about people responding to incentives depending on whether they or their family members are more or less wealthy.