I review the academic literature on defined contribution retirement plan design and participant behavior. While adoption of automatic enrollment has significantly increased participation rates, recent studies find the long-run effects on savings are smaller than the short-run effects, with some...

We analyse how the financial support for long-term elderly care affects the level of household savings. Using a difference-in-differences estimator, we investigate the 2002 Scottish reform, which introduced free formal personal care for all the elderly aged 65 and above residing in Scotland. Our...

Demographic changes, tight public budgets, and reduced generosity of occupational pension plans shift the responsibility for an adequate retirement provision towards the individual. Applying the theoretical perspectives of Behavioural Finance and New Institutionalism to the domain of retirement...

Saving for retirement is fraught with risk and uncertainty. For those not privileged by participation in a defined benefit pension plan, the issue is made complex and problematic by the failure of inherited decision rules: the options available are variable in terms of their costs and possible...

I use an electronic transfer mandate in the UK Child Benefit program, a transfer received by virtually all families with children, to estimate the effect of bank account ownership on the financial behavior of less educated families with children. With the mandate increasing account ownership by...

We analyse how the financial support for long-term elderly care affects the level of household savings. Using a difference-in-differences estimator, we investigate the 2002 Scottish reform, which introduced free formal personal care for all the elderly aged 65 and above residing in Scotland. Our...

In his Budget speech on 19 March 2014, the UK Chancellor announced the biggest change in pension policy in 100 years: ‘Pensioners will have complete freedom to draw down as much or as little of their pension pot as they want, any time they want. No caps. No drawdown limit. Let me be clear. No...

We analyse how the financial support for long-term elderly care affects the household's propensity to save. Using the difference-in-differences estimator, we investigate the 2002 Scottish reform, which introduced free formal personal care for all the Scottish elderly aged 65 and above. We find...

We explore whether a protective role for savings against future financial hardship exists using household level panel data. We jointly model the incidence and extent of financial problems, as well as the likelihood of having secured debt and the amount of monthly secured debt repayments,...