About the Cognitive Economics Project

Aging citizens are required to make complex decisions leading up to and during retirement. These choices often reflect complex trade-offs between financial, health, and long-term care risks. Moreover, as people age, there is a mismatch between the complexity of these decisions and the reality of cognitive declines that accompany aging.

The Cognitive Economics Project is a multidisciplinary effort to understand the decisionmaking of aging citizens, particularly how cognitive and subjective factors affect, and are affected by, decisions preparing for retirement and sustaining well-being in retirement. The project supports and coordinates survey and experimental data collection, analysis of new data alongside longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and other panels, and advancement of theories to understand the complex decisions faced by aging households. Researchers collect and analyze linked data over the following domains: (i) decisions, behaviors, and outcomes including wealth, income, work and retirement, and health; (ii) factors that determine behavior including expectations, risk preference, affect, and financial knowledge;and, (iii) cognition.

The Cognitive Economics Project was funded by the National Institute on Aging, grant NIA P01 AG026571.

Please email [cogeconproject AT umich DOT edu] with questions or concerns.