One of the biggest criticisms leveled at defined contribution individual account (IA) components of social security systems is that they are too expensive. This paper investigates the cost-effectiveness of three options for constructing funded social security pillars: 1) IA's invested in the...

The asset allocation of defined benefit pension plans is a setting where both risk shifting and risk management incentives are likely be present. Empirically, firms with poorly funded pension plans and weak credit ratings allocate a greater share of pension fund assets to safer securities such...

We study the impact of regulations on the investment decisions of a defined benefits pension plan. We assess the influence of ex ante (preventive) and ex post (punitive) risk constraints on the gains to dynamic, as opposed to myopic, decision making. We find that preventive measures, such as...

Demographic change can have an important effect on the stock of assets held in defined benefit pension plans. This paper projects the impact of changes in the age structure of the U.S. population between 2005 and 2040 on the stock of assets held by these plans. It projects the contributions to...

Proposals that portion of the Social Security Trust Fund assets be invested in equities entail the possibility that a severe decline in equity prices renders the Fund assets insufficient to provide the currently mandated level of benefits. In this event, existing taxpayers may be compelled to...

We assess the impact on savings behavior of several different 401(k) plan features, including automatic enrollment, automatic cash distributions, employer matching provisions, eligibility requirements, investment options, and financial education. We also present new survey evidence on individual...

The purpose of this paper is to survey what is known about the investment policy of pension funds. Pension fund investment policy depends critically on the type of plan: defined contribution versus defined benefit. For defined contribution plans investment policy is not much different than it is...

Individual responsibility for portfolio construction is a central theme for defined contribution pensions, yet the rise of target-date funds is shifting investment decisions from workers back to employers. A complex choice architecture including automatic enrollment, reenrollment, and fund...

We use payroll data on 1.2 million bank employee years in the Austrian, German, and Swiss banking sector to identify incentive pay in the critical banking segments of treasury/capital market management and investment banking for 66 banks. We document an economically significant correlation of...