The paper deals with the question of whether it is possible to combine the insights and recommendations of optimal individual lifecycle investing with the proven gains of defined benefit pension funds. These gains primarily stem from cost efficiency and (intergenerational) risk sharing.We...

We investigate inattention on the part of pension plan participants using a novel dataset covering savings in Sweden's Premium Pension System, data that permit direct comparison of the investment behaviors of pension and retail mutual fund investors. Unlike retail mutual fund investors, pension...

Many pension funds have a mismatch between assets and liabilities, taking more risks than securing liabilities implies. This puts fixed claims of retirees at risk. For the cases with and without macro-risk, this paper analyses the implications of this asset-liability mismatch for welfare,...

In this paper we analyze the possibilities of intergenerational risk sharing in a generational DB pension fund. In a generational pension plan each generation has their own pension scheme and is subject to discretionary investment, indexation and contribution policies, thereby losing...

Administrative costs per participant appear to vary widely across pension funds in different countries. These costs are important because they reduce the rate of return on the investments of pension funds, and consequently raise the cost of retirement security. Using unique data on 90 pension...

This paper examines the impact of participants' age distribution on the asset allocation of Dutch pension funds, using a unique data set of pension fund investment plans for 2007. Theory predicts a negative effect of age on (strategic) equity exposures. We observe that pension funds do indeed...

We propose a generational plan for the occupational pension provision in which people from the same generation are pooled in a generational fund. Each fund can set its own policies independently. This plan provides the benefits of differentiation missing in the prevailing collective plan and the...

The credit crisis has reduced the funding ratios of Dutch pension funds to a historical minimum. Pension funds now face two challenges. The first is to timely restore funding ratios to safe levels without jeopardizing labour market conditions that also have worsened because of the crisis. The...

We jointly test moral hazard and tax benefit hypotheses related to the defined benefit pension plan funding and investment risk-taking decisions by incorporating the pension plan termination probabilities. We hypothesize that sponsors with different plan termination probabilities are dominated...