Blain Pearson

• Professor (Assistant) at Coastal Carolina University

Purpose Although annuitization provides insurance against longevity risk that can benefit households, researchers have uncovered an annuitization puzzle, which suggests households are reluctant to annuitize their wealth. This study contributes to the discussions on the annuitization puzzle by examining investor sophistication and owning annuities i...

This study examines if households experience utility gains by selecting one of its members to specialize in its financial management. Utilizing data that are collected from the Health and Retirement Study, a variable measuring households’ level of financial specialization (HFS) is first constructed. The HFS variable is examined for its association...

Purpose This study examines the association between financial literacy confidence and financial satisfaction. The authors posit that overconfident poor performers will experience greater levels of financial satisfaction and underconfident high performers will experience lower levels of financial satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach Based on t...

A higher level of risky financial assets that a retiree holds may produce higher returns, resulting in utility gains. To test this hypothesis, a variable is constructed measuring retirees' ratio of risky assets to total assets (risk ratio). Next, the association between the risk ratio and retiree utility is examined using a retirement satisfaction...

This study examines the association between the big five “OCEAN” personality traits and late-life categorical spending regret. The categorical spending regrets examined are housing, food, clothing, appliances/furnishings, cars, leisure, child-related expenses, and providing financial help. Openness was associated negatively with spending regret on...

Personal finance research often utilizes Likert-type items and Likert scales as dependent variables, frequently employing standard probit and ordered probit models. If inappropriately modeled, the "neutral" category of discrete dependent variables can bias estimates of the remaining categories. Through the utilization of hierarchical models, this p...

This study examines data from the U.S. 2018 and 2019 Survey of Household Economics and Decision making (SHED) to understand the association between student loan debt and emergency-saving decisions, including the moderating role of financial knowledge. Controlling self-selection bias through a propensity score and coarsened exact matching approach,...

This study explored the relationship between personality traits and financial satisfaction and explored if the perceived COVID-19 impacts on finance and well-being play moderating roles. With data from a national online survey in the United States, results indicate that personality traits significantly predict financial satisfaction levels, with op...

This study examines the association between earmarking bequeathable assets and retirement satisfaction. Utilizing longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study, the authors examine the retirement satisfaction of retirees who have intentionally earmarked their bequeathable assets compared to retirees who have not. The findings suggest that...

This study examines the propensity of responding “don’t know” (DK) to a set of financial literacy questions provided by the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS), a nationally representative U.S. data set. When given the opportunity to respond correctly, incorrectly, or DK, the inclusion of a DK response item uniquely encompasses facets of fin...

This study examines how automatic enrollment and employer contribution provisions relate to the retirement plan participation decisions of Millennials using data from the 2018 U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA) Millennial Investment Study. The analysis controls for various factors such as total debt, household income, risk toler...

Recent developments in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics may explain the lower-than-predicted asset decumulation behavior posited by traditional life-cycle models during retirement, dubbed the retirement consumption puzzle. This study examines if mental accounting could be used to explain the retirement consumption puzzle. Utilizing pan...

This study investigates the relationship between baby boomers’ personality traits and their student loan indebtedness in the United States. This article utilizes the 2014 data set from the 1979 cohort of the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, applies survey weights, estimates multiple probit models, and computes marginal effects. The resul...

This study investigates the relationship between personality traits and older individuals' stock investment decisions using structural equation modeling. The results suggest that greater openness and extraversion are associated with a higher propensity to participate in stock investments and hold a larger proportion of stock investments relative to...

This study examines the effects of financial advice on college-saving decisions using data sets from the 2009 and 2012 U.S. National Financial Capability Study. After controlling for self-selection bias through propensity score matching, the findings show that receiving financial advice is associated positively with the likelihood of saving for chi...

Research on residential preferences has consistently orbited around their been correlation with economic and social factors. This study builds on the existing literature by investigating the personality characteristics that shape residential behavior. The specific objective is to examine the Big Five personality traits (OCEAN)—openness, conscientio...

This study examines how engagement in financial management activities influences well-being using nationally representative data (N = approximately 30,000) from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey and its associated Well-Being Modules. The current study estimates ordered probit models for several measures of experiential w...

This study examines whether a predictor of loss aversion sensitivity is related to investors' existing financial position. Using two measures of loss aversion sensitivity, we find no statistically significant difference in loss aversion sensitivity between those with low and high levels of financial assets. Higher degrees of loss aversion sensitivi...

This study examines the association between retiree financial planning horizon and retirement satisfaction using longitudinal data collected from the Health and Retirement Study. The results indicate that retirees with long-term financial planning horizons, compared to retirees with short-term financial planning horizons, are more likely to be very...

This study investigated the association between student debt and healthcare service usage utilizing pooled data collected from the 2015 to 2018 waves of the National Financial Capability Study. The findings of this study suggest that, when compared to those without student debt, student debt holders have a lower likelihood of filling prescriptions...

The purpose of this study is to examine migration during retirement and its association with retirement satisfaction. Utilizing longitudinal data collected from the Health and Retirement Study, this study estimates a fixed-effects logit model to examine how changing U.S. Census divisions during retirement is related to retirement satisfaction. The...