Using U.K. microeconomic data, we analyze the empirical determinants of voluntary annuity market demand. We find that annuity market participation increases with financial wealth, life expectancy and education and decreases with other pension income and a possible bequest motive for surviving...

We use the 2008 crisis as an exogenous shock to the pension funding status of U.S. corporate defined benefit (DB) pension plans to examine the causal impact on the assumption of the expected return on pension assets (ER). Contrary to prior literature, we find that DB pension plans transitioning...