Carlson, K., Kim, J., Lusardi, A., &Camerer, C. F. (2015). Bankruptcy rates among NFL players with short-lived income spikes. American Economic Review, 105(5), 381-84.
We test for consumption smoothing using bankruptcy data on players in the National Football League (NFL), who typically earn several million dollars during an income spike that lasts a few years. The life-cycle hypothesis predicts that players should save substantially while playing and then have little risk of bankruptcy post-NFL. However, players in our sample begin to file for bankruptcy soon after they stop playing ...