Data for: Assisted Savings for Retirement: An Experimental Analysis

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European Economic Review
Guide to Data Appendix

Bohr, Holt, and Schubert: “Assisted Savings for Retirement: An Experimental Analysis”

The 12 sessions for the main experiment are listed as AS_1, AS_2,…,AS_6 for the assisted savings treatment and PS_1, PS_2,…,PS_6 for the private savings treatment. These labels appear in the “label” column on the left of the file. Even though the “AS” and “PS” indicate the treatment, there is a separate column for the treatment as well. The “Vecon Lab Session Name” column refers to the name used for each session in the VeconLab database, which is for recordkeeping purposes only and can be ignored.

The subjects in each session have ID labels 1.. 9, as shown in the “id” column, and the data for each session are sorted by round in the “round” column. The “market price” column shows the call market-clearing price that is the same for each person in a given round. As noted in the paper, if there were no trades and a bid-ask spread was defined, the price was determined to be the midpoint of that spread. In each round, each trader can make a bid characterized by a limit price and number of units, which are shown in the “bid price” and “bid quantity” columns. Similarly, offers to sell are shown in the “offer price” and “offer quantity” columns. The “fundamental value” column shows 28 in all periods for this flat value design. There are also columns for “quantity bought” “quantity sold” and “final share holdings” that list numbers of shares in these categories. The “cash” column shows the subject’s final cash position at the end of the round, after interest and dividends are paid and balances are adjusted for share purchases, share sales, and consumption expenditures. “Change in lab cash” refers to how much more cash holdings a subject has compared to the prior period. The “dividend” shows which dividend was realized in that round, the “interest received” column lists interest income for that person in that round. The individual’s consumption expenditure in a round is listed in the “consumption” column. “Consumption earnings” refers to the earnings amount resulting from converting lab dollars into take home pay (US dollars). Those period-by-period earnings in US dollars are accumulated in the “cumulative earnings column.” The cumulative earnings for the final period 18 include final share redemptions and all consumed lab cash as described in the paper.