NBER Publications by Anthony Webb

A growing literature offers indirect evidence that the distribution of bargaining power within a household influences decisions made by the household. The indirect evidence links household outcomes to variables that are assumed to influence the distribution of power within the household. In this paper, we have data on whether a husband or wife in the Health and Retirement Study %u201Chas the final say%u201D when making major decisions in a household. We use this variable to analyze determinants and some consequences of bargaining power. Our analysis overcomes endogeneity problems arising in many earlier studies and constitutes a missing link confirming the importance of household bargaining models. We find that decision-making power depends on plausible individual variables and also infl...

Using the widely-cited Lee-Carter mortality model, we quantify aggregate mortality risk as the risk that the average annuitant lives longer than is predicted by the model, and we conclude that annuity business exposes insurance companies to substantial mortality risk. We calculate that a markup of 3.7% on an annuity premium (or else shareholders%u2019 capital equal to 3.7% of the expected present value of annuity payments) would reduce the probability of insolvency resulting from uncertain aggregate mortality trends to 5% and a markup of 5.4% would reduce the probability of insolvency to 1%. Using the same model, we find that a projection scale commonly referred to by the insurance industry underestimates aggregate mortality improvements. Annuities that are priced on that projection sca...

Defined benefit pension plans have become considerably less common since the early 1980s, while defined contribution plans have spread. Previous research showed that defined benefit plans, with sharp incentives encouraging retirement after a certain point, contributed to the striking postwar decline in American retirement ages. In this paper we find that the absence of age-related incentives in defined contribution plans leads workers to retire almost two years later on average, compared to workers with defined benefit plans. Thus, the evolution of pension structure can help explain recent increases in employment among people in their 60s, after decades of decline.