Life-cycle stock market participation in taxable and tax-deferred accounts

The stock market participation patterns differ significantly in taxable (TAs) and tax-deferred accounts (TDAs). This paper develops a quantitative life-cycle model to study the optimal stock market participation choice for households with assets in both TAs and TDAs. We find that differential costs...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Zhou, Jie.
Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/107477
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/17907
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jedc.2012.05.002
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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Summary:The stock market participation patterns differ significantly in taxable (TAs) and tax-deferred accounts (TDAs). This paper develops a quantitative life-cycle model to study the optimal stock market participation choice for households with assets in both TAs and TDAs. We find that differential costs of stock market participation in the two accounts explain the higher participation rate in TDAs early in life relative to TAs and the increasing stock market participation rate in TAs over the life cycle. We also show that the differential tax treatment between TAs and TDAs is responsible for the decline in the participation rate in TDAs late in life, while the basis-reset provision of the tax code is not quantitatively important.