Most workers in defined contribution retirement plans are inattentive portfolio managers: only a few engage in any trading at all, and only a tiny minority trades actively. Using a rich new dataset on 1.2 million workers in over 1,500 plans, we find that most 401(k) plan participants are...

In an effort to improve 401(k) portfolio choices, many US plan sponsors are offering target maturity date (TM) lifecycle funds, which place younger workers into higher-equity-share portfolios and then automatically rebalance them into more conservative holdings as they near retirement age. Our...

Few previous studies have explored how individuals manage their defined contribution (DC) pension plan assets, though these plans constitute an increasingly important component of retirement wealth. Using a valuable new dataset on over one million active 401(k) plan participants in a wide range...

Economic theory predicts that employer-provided retiree health insurance benefits crowd-out household wealth accumulation. Nevertheless, there is little research on the impacts of retiree health insurance on wealth accruals, so this paper utilizes a unique data file on three baseline cohorts...

We investigate how the Japanese pension market for funded employment-based pensions is changing and how it might be strengthened in order to better serve one of the most rapidly aging populations in the world. Public and private pensions in Japan are estimated to hold around US$3 trillion,...

Using a unique new dataset linking administrative data on investment performance and financial knowledge, we examine whether investors who are more financially knowledgeable earn more on their retirement plan investments, compared to their less sophisticated counterparts. We find that...

This book explores how rising pension and healthcare costs, along with workforce aging, are affecting pension and retirement planning around the world. Many middle-aged workers now realize that they will have to work longer than intended, as they begin to recognize that their retirement...