Time preferences over the life cycle and household saving puzzles
利用代表性长期面板数据，发现贴现率随年龄线性下降，这有助于解释家庭储蓄中年轻时储蓄不足和退休后储蓄过多的谜题，模型拟合度提升40%和30%。
Most economic models assume that time preferences are stable over time, but the evidence on their long-term stability is lacking. We study whether and how time preferences change over the life cycle, exploiting representative long-term panel data. We provide new evidence that discount rates decrease with age and the decline is remarkably linear over the life cycle. Decreasing discounting helps a canonical life-cycle model to explain the household saving puzzles of undersaving when young and oversaving after retirement. Relative to the model with constant discounting, the model’s fit to consumption and asset data profiles improves by 40% and 30%, respectively.