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

退休储蓄决定是私人家庭最重要的决定之一，因为它们会产生严重的财务后果。近年来，退休储蓄的责任已从公共养老金系统转移到这些家庭。在退休条款的背景下，决策的复杂性给许多人带来了问题，因此行为研究在这一领域变得重要。这项研究的大部分涉及储蓄阶段。对支付阶段的研究要少得多，尽管考虑到人口老龄化，这一阶段的研究越来越重要，工作后的时间。在这里，家庭也面临着困难的决定，但必须处理额外的，不熟悉的风险类型。本研究项目的重点是两种特定的风险类型：通货膨胀风险和长寿风险。在支付阶段，通货膨胀风险尤其相关，因为没有人力资本可以抵消货币贬值。长寿风险描述的是寿命过长，以至于储蓄的资本用完，没有可用收入的风险。虽然年金提供了一个有效的保险，防止这种风险，他们购买的频率比标准的经济理论将预测少得多。最近的研究表明，这种现象--称为年金之谜--可以根据决策情境的具体框架进行行为解释。家庭不认为年金是保险产品，而是一种对自己寿命长短的赌博。这样一来，年金就不会减少风险，反而会增加风险，即回报低于投资资本的风险。在这一背景下，模糊厌恶和损失厌恶起着重要的作用。这两种现象已被彻底调查的判断和决策文献，但不知道他们的效果是在特定的动态设置的支付阶段。在这里，模糊性并不涉及回报规模的不确定性，而是涉及寿命的不确定性，从而支付的时间长度。该研究项目的目标是通过行为和实验研究揭示，理解和解释退休支付阶段决策中的系统性偏见和错误。框架语境中的歧义厌恶和损失厌恶是分析的重点。为此目的，年金以及特定的产品特性和功能，如通货膨胀保护和名义资本担保进行了研究。

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.