Crowding-out in savings decisions, portfolio default adoption and home ownership: evidence from the Chilean retirement system

This paper studies crowd-out effects across choices regarding different sources of investment and savings in the Chilean pension system (e.g., voluntary savings within and outside the retirement system, housing status, and default portfolio adoption). Because preferences over choice sets are unobserved and it is expected that individual unobserved characteristics may be correlated across decisions, I jointly estimate a dynamic reduced-form life cycle model of wealth accumulation. Simulation results indicate no short- or long-run crowd-out effects across voluntary savings accounts within and outside the retirement system. There is evidence that in the short run, there is crowding-out between mandatory savings and other forms of investments, such as home ownership or savings in the financial-banking sector. Results also show that in the long run, individuals treat home ownership and participation in voluntary retirement programs as substitute goods. Finally, the long-run effects of participating in voluntary savings programs are important in increasing active participation in portfolio decisions.