Tax-qualified vehicles helped U.S. private-sector workers accumulate $25Tr in retirement assets. An often-overlooked important institutional feature shaping decumulations from these retirement plans is the “Required Minimum Distribution” (RMD) regulation, requiring retirees to withdraw a...

This paper investigates retirees’ optimal purchases of fixed and variable longevity income annuities using their defined contribution (DC) plan assets and given their expected Social Security benefits. As an alternative, we also evaluate using plan assets to boost Social Security benefits...

We develop a life-cycle model with optimal consumption, portfolio choice, and flexible work hours for households with loss-framing preferences giving them disutility if they experience losses from stock investments. Structural estimation using U.S. data shows that the model tracks the empirical...

Prior studies disagree regarding the effectiveness of financial education programs, especially those offered in the workplace. To explain such measurement differences in evaluation and outcomes, we employ a stochastic life cycle model with endogenous financial knowledge accumulation to...

Trust is an essential component of the financial system, and distrust can undermine saving and economic growth. Accordingly, prior research has shown that survey responses to a question about ‘trust in people' are associated with household willingness to invest in the stock market....

Policymaker and media attention has recently focused on the rise of the so-called “gig” or freelance employment sector, where workers lack formal long-term relationships with one specific firm. This topic has captured public interest partly because of concern that those engaged in...

Target date funds in corporate retirement plans grew from $5B in 2000 to $734B in 2018, partly because federal regulation sanctioned these as default investments in automatic enrollment plans. We show that adopters delegated pension investment decisions to fund managers selected by plan...

As the world confronts unprecedented global aging, academics and policymakers are growing increasingly aware of the need for better risk management tools to handle the demographic transition. It is therefore imperative to identify innovative insurance and financial market products that can...

This paper examines two behavioral factors that diminish people's ability to value a lifetime income stream or annuity, drawing on a survey of about 4,000 adults in a U.S. nationally representative sample. By experimentally varying the degree of complexity, we provide the first causal evidence...

The online appendix to this paper can be found at: "https://ssrn.com/abstract=3332255" https://ssrn.com/abstract=3332255. Using an incentivized survey and a representative sample of investors, we elicit ambiguity attitudes toward a familiar company stock, a local stock index, a foreign stock...