The present paper studies the growth and efficiency consequences of pension funding with individual retirement accounts in a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic lifespan and labor income uncertainty. We distinguish between economies with rational and hyperbolic...

This paper assesses the sophistication of pension funds’ investment policies using data on 748 Dutch pension funds during the 1999–2006 period. We develop three indicators of sophistication: gross rounding of investment choices, investments in alternative sophisticated asset classes and...

The share of the older workers in the labor force has increased due to population aging and pension reforms in many countries. However, rules of the public and private pension schemes and restrictions from the employers still require large populations of older workers with possibly heteregeneous...

This paper develops a pension product that is explicit about the pre-established goals that are aimed for. The proposed product presents a trade-off that is transparent in terms of required contributions, the income level targeted and guarantees offered. Depending on participants' preferences,...

We use a historical experiment to test whether U.S. corporate defined benefit pension plans strategically use regulatory freedom to lower the reported value of pension liabilities, and hence required cash contributions. For some years, pension plans were required to estimate two liabilities -...

I study the relationship between household saving and pensions, and estimate both the displacement effect of pensions on private saving and the precautionary saving effect due to uncertainty in pension income. Using a lifecycle framework, the consumption function depends on expected pension...

We investigate the influence of investment regulations on the riskiness and procyclicality of defined-benefit (DB) pension funds' asset allocations. We provide a global comparison of the regulatory framework for public, corporate and industry pension funds in the US, Canada and the Netherlands....

In this project we study joint retirement of couples in Europe. We characterize various empirical regularities and use a model for simultaneous duration variables developed in Honor e and de Paula (2014). Whereas conventionally used duration models cannot account for joint retirement, our model...

The expectations of economic agents play a crucial role in almost any inter-temporal economic model. A period of economic crisis may make consumer expectations more pessimistic and affect their saving or retirement plans and decisions. Using 2009-2012 panel data for a representative sample of...

We analyze a collective defined contribution pension fund which aims at intergenerational risk sharing among different age cohorts using a return smoothing mechanism. Using a utility based framework, we find that approximately one third of unexpected return shocks should be directly passed on to...