We examine the investment performance of over 160 thousand U.S. private pension plans. We find significant economies of scale in performance and administrative expenses, which are more prominent for defined benefit (DB) plans than for defined contribution (DC) plans. DC plans outperform...

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 minimum...

Individual investors, policy-makers, and members of the financial services industry are struggling to figure out how best to help individuals prepare for a financially secure retirement; namely, allowing individuals to continue their pre-retirement standard-of-living post retirement. We propose...

There is a looming retirement crisis, as individuals are increasingly being asked to take responsibility for their own retirement planning and a majority of these individuals are financially unsophisticated. They cannot perform basic compounding calculations and do not understand the impact of...

In the 2010s, the Korean government revised the Income Tax Act to increase the tax burden for retirement income paid in a lump sum. The reform gradually increased the tax from 2015 to 2020. In addition, if a plan member transfers retirement income to the individual retirement pension account to...

Estimating a rate of withdrawal for a retirement portfolio that will not lead to its premature exhaustion is one of the key questions that besieges a retirement planner. This rate is commonly referred to as the Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR). Following a landmark study by Bengen (1994), the most...

Brazilian policy makers and researchers have discussed the introduction of a complementary pension system to complement the Regime Geral de Previdência Social (RGPS), specially for those that want a retirement income above the RGPS ceiling. This article first recommends that the complementary...

We provide the first academic study on the performance of IRA pension plans from 2004 through 2018. At the aggregate level, the risk-adjusted performances of IRA plans are comparable to that of the aggregate equity market. However, high-income individuals substantially outperform low-income...

We show that incorporating defined benefit pension funds in an asset pricing model with incomplete markets improves its ability to jointly match the historical equity premium and riskless rate, and has important implications for risk sharing. We emphasize the importance of the pension fund's...

A commonly-accepted retirement goal for a healthy pension is for it to sustain the relatively higher standard-of-living of the latter part of one’s working life throughout retirement. A recent innovation implemented by Brazil in January 2023 might provide a solution to the pension challenges...