Why do most individuals claim Social Security benefits before the full retirement age? Claiming early results in a substantial reduction pension income, yet many people as possible (age 62) or soon thereafter. We argue that by answering this question, we can make two additional contributions to literature. First, claiming is equivalent low demand for annuity, thus it offers unique context study...

Using a lifecycle framework with Epstein-Zin (1989) utility and mixed-integer optimization approach, we compute the optimal age to claim Social Security benefits. Taking advantage of homogeneity, sufficient statistic is ratio wealth primary insurance amount (PIA). If investor's PIA exceeds certain threshold, individuals should defer for at least year. The threshold depends on mortality assumpti...

This study analyzes the extent to which an individual’s survival expectations influence his or her decision to claim social security benefits at an early age. We find that subjective survival probabilities capture meaningful behavioral responses to incentives for early Social Security claiming when they are purged of measurement error using risk factors as instruments. Among people who are stil...

Accuracy on over-claiming tests (the ability to distinguish real items from foils) has been shown to be a sensitive measure of knowledge in a number of domains. Here we compared the efficiency of the over-claiming technique relative to multiple-choice and essay/short answer techniques. One-hundred and eight first-year undergraduate students completed a psychology knowledge test including items ...

One of the key problems for large-vocabulary ASR is the detection of unknown or misrecognized portions of the input. This paper presents results obtained using a local rejection algorithm. The algorithm is derived from the two-pass recognition algorithm by Murveit [3] and is used to detect misrecognized portions based on the number per frame of active words during the second pass. The hypothesi...

We show how optimal household decisions regarding work, retirement, saving, portfolio allocations, and life insurance are shaped by the complex financial options embedded in U.S. Social Security rules and uncertain family transitions. Our life cycle model predicts sharp consumption drops on retirement, an age-62 peak in claiming rates, and earlier claiming by wives versus husbands and single wo...