The reverse mortgage market has been expanding rapidly in developed economies in recent years. The onset of demographic transition places a rapidly rising number of households in an age window where reverse mortgages have potential appeal, and increasing prices for residential real estate over...

A major change in the training of actuaries in the period since the 1990s has been the introduction of the concepts underlying financial economics into the mainstream of actuarial coursework. Yet in this same period, three parallel developments have taken place - changes in the traditional role...

Advancing annuity demand theory, we present sufficient conditions for the optimality of full annuitization under market completeness that are substantially less restrictive than those used by Yaari (1965). We examine demand with market incompleteness, finding that positive annuitization remains...

As of 2005, individuals had an estimated $7.4 trillion invested in IRAs and employer-sponsored retirement accounts. Given these investments, many retirees will face the difficult problem of turning a pool of assets into a stream of retirement income. Purchasing an immediate annuity is a common...

A considerable literature examines the optimal decumulation of financial wealth in retirement. We extend this line of research to incorporate housing, which comprises the majority of most households' non-pension wealth. We estimate the relationship between the returns on housing, stocks, and...

As baby boomers enter retirement, they will look to the investment industry for ways to generate retirement income from a stock of accumulated saving. A longstanding puzzle is why most retirees do not purchase longevity insurance in the form of lifetime annuities. This question is rising in...

Contrary to economic theory, few retirees voluntarily annuitize much, if any, of their wealth. This behavior has been at least partly explained by factors such as bequest motives, a demand for liquid wealth, or a restrictive annuity investment universe, all of which impose implicit costs on...

This paper explains why selection in the US reverse mortgage market to date has been advantageous rather than adverse. Reverse mortgages let quot;house rich, cash poorquot; older homeowners transfer wealth from the wealthy period after their home is sold to the impoverished period before. Near...

This paper uses stochastic simulations on calibrated models to assess the steady state impact of different pension arrangements in an environment where financial markets are less than perfect. Surprisingly little is known about the optimal split between funded and unfunded systems when there are...

This paper reviews the impact of aging on private pensions, in particular on the payout phase, assesses the part that annuities can play in financing retirement, and examines the role of financial markets in facilitating the allocation on assets accumulated in defined contribution pension plans....