Measurement Error in the Reported Reasons for Entry into the Foster Care System

To date, much of the research on foster dependence hinges on the validity of the reasons for entry into the foster care system. Yet, no one has tested these data. Since these reasons for entry help to assess individual differences in foster care children, the purpose of this study is to more closely examine these reasons. Using data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis Reporting System, we begin with exploratory factor analysis on the reported reasons for entry. Next, we specify and test a structural measurement error model of reasons for entry. The reported reasons for entry are not mutually exclusive. Rather, there are five significant commonalities across these various indicators. The commonalities are combined across the reported reasons for entry into the foster care system to create a set of mutually exclusive factors that represent reasons. We apply these factors to a model of dependence on the foster care system. Compared to a model that includes all of the individual indicators, we are able to get a better idea of the kinds of children that are at risk for delayed exits from foster care.

Retirement Expectations Formation Using the Health and Retirement Study

This paper examines how a wide array of factors (household and individual level financial, health and other taste shifter characteristics) influence retirement plans over time and how uncertainty affects the strategies that individuals use to plan their retirement years. Using panel data models we examine the role of health and economic factors on retirement planning using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We examine the rationality of plans for retirement controlling for sample selection. After controlling for sample selection, reporting biases, and unobserved heterogeneity we find that plans for retirement do follow the random walk hypothesis and pass tests of weak and strong rationality. These findings allow us to assume rationality and examine retirement plans using first differences. We then examine changes to those factors and the effects of new information on plans and find that new information contributes little to changes in plans. This leads us to conclude that on average people correctly form expectations over uncertain events when planning for retirement. These results have important implications for a wide variety of models in economics that assume rational behavior. Classification-JEL: J26, J22, C23,D84 Keywords: Expectations, Retirement, Panel Data with selection, rationality

Expectation Formation of Older Married Couples and the Rational Expectations Hypothesis

This paper tests the Rational Expectations (RE) hypothesis regarding retirement expectations of married older American couples, controlling for sample selection and reporting biases. In prior research we found that individual retirement expectation formation was consistent with the Rational Expectation hypothesis, but in that work spousal considerations were not analyzed. In this research we take advantage of panel data on expectations to test the RE hypothesis among married individuals as well as joint expectations among couples. We find that regardless of whether we assume that married individuals form their own expectations taking spouse’s information as exogenous, or the reports of the couple are the result of a joint expectation formation process, their expectations are consistent with the RE hypothesis. Our results support a wide variety of models in economics that assume rational behavior for married couples.

What to Expect when you are Expecting Rationality: Testing Rational Expectations using Micro Data

This paper tests the Rational Expectations (RE) hypothesis regarding retirement expectations, controlling for sample selection, reporting biases, and unobserved heterogeneity. We find that retirement expectations in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) are consistent with the RE hypothesis. We also examine how a wide array of factors, such as wealth, income, health insurance, pensions, and health status influence retirement expectations formation using panel data from all available waves of the HRS. We further analyze how new information affects the evolution of retirement expectations and discover that, on average, individuals correctly anticipate most uncertain events when planning their retirement, except for some health conditions and economic factors. Our results have important implications for a wide variety of models in economics that assume rational behavior.

A Dynamic Model of Retirement and Social Security Reform Expectations: A Solution to the New Early Retirement Puzzle

The need for Social Security Reform in the next years is hardly a matter of debate. Therefore, the widespread believe among Americans that Social Security will not be able to pay benefits in the long run at the level that was anticipated, does not come as a surprise. The government acknowledges the situation, and predicts that substantial benefits cuts will be necessary, yet no legislation has been passed to tackle the problem. Researchers, however, have rarely modeled the uncertainty over Social Security reform and benefit levels, and how they affect claiming behavior and retirement. The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which these perceptions of future cuts might explain the puzzle of earlier take-up despite bigger penalties to doing so in the presence of increasing longevity. By introducing a small amount of uncertainty (based on self-reported responses to questions regarding expectations over future cuts) of a relatively small cut (compared with what the government reports as necessary to solve the crisis) in a dynamic life-cycle model of retirement, we are able to match the claiming behavior observed in the data, without relying on heterogeneous preferences. Our results support the hypothesis that expectations over future benefits are affecting current behavior. We find that a mis-specified dynamic retirement model would erroneously predict that an increase in the NRA would delay claiming behavior and increase labor supply at older ages. Once the appropriate earnings test incentives are modeled, and we account for the probability of reforms to the system, an increase in the NRA has little effect on claiming behavior, and it can even increase the proportion of individuals claiming before the NRA.

Health Problems as Determinants of Retirement: Are Self-Rated Measures Endogenous?

We explore alternative measures of unobserved health status in order to identify effects of mental and physical capacity for work on older men’s retirement. Traditional self-ratings of poor health are tested against more objectively measured instruments. Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we find that health problems influence retirement plans more strongly than do economic variables. Specifically, men in poor overall health expected to retire one to two years earlier, an effect that persists after correcting for potential endogeneity of self-rated health problems. The effects of detailed health problems are also examined in depth

Evaluating Mental Health Capitation Treatment: Lessons from Panel Data

The paper evaluates a capitation-financed system of mental health services delivery developed in Rochester, New York. Cost/benefit analysis of the treatment program is implemented on three years of data using program evaluation techniques. Patient outcomes are compared across randomly assigned study groups as well as across enrollment status. The analysis implements difference-in-difference econometric techniques recently developed in the labor economics literature to control for potentially non-random attrition as well as selective non-compliance. We find that patients enrolled in the capitation program do experience significantly lower costs without becoming sicker, even after controlling for attrition and sample selection.

Expectations in Micro Data: Rationality Revisited

An increasing number of longitudinal data sets collect expectations information regarding a variety of future individual level events and decisions, providing researchers with the opportunity to explore expectations over micro variables in detail. We present a theoretical framework and an econometric methodology to use that type of information to test the Rational Expectations (RE) hypothesis in models of individual behavior. This RE assumption at the micro level underlies a majority of the research in applied fields in economics, and it is the common foundation of most work in dynamic models of individual behavior. We present tests of three different types of expectations using two different panel data sets that represent two very different populations. In all three cases we cannot reject the RE hypothesis. Our results support a wide variety of models in economics, and other disciplines, that assume rational behavior.Rational Expectations, Retirement, Longevity, and Education Expectations, Instrumental Variables, Sample Selection.