Many college and university 403(b) plans restrict the menu of investment choices to funds offered by TIAA-CREF, the current manager of over half of all 403(b) contributions. Further, in the face of Internal Revenue Code changes that will take effect in 2006 and will make 403(b) plan ERISA...

A significant part of the development in pension provision in many countries is the emergence of ‘Target Date Funds' or TDFs. In this paper we examine the proposition of de-risking through life and the guidance offered by TDFs in the decumulation phase following retirement. We investigate the...

We pursue a cross-country comparison of relative financial readiness of older households in Japan and the Republic of Korea relative to the United States. Our comparative analysis, using macro-level and harmonized longitudinal household financial data, covers the principal financial channels of...

This paper evaluates a new variant of the popular target date funds used in employer-based retirement savings plans. We call this new variant a "target retirement plan." Instead of increasing the allocation to bond funds as retirement approaches, a target retirement fund gradually purchases...

Two issues may have a tremendous impact on the adequacy of retirement income for today's workers: The growth of 401(k) pension plans and the possible privatization of Social Security. Workers are becoming increasingly responsible for the adequacy of their retirement income by determining how...

This paper studies the relationship between fund and provider characteristics, and fund performance using a sample of 4,197 U.K personal pension funds operated by 35 providers over a 30 years' period (1980-2009). The fund performance is measured on an annual basis (short-term) and over the whole...

Leveraged ETFs provide a convenient mechanism to dynamically change portfolio exposure and can be successfully used to construct robust portfolios that perform well during equity market drops. We start with a classical 60 percent Bonds/ 40 percent Stocks portfolio with monthly rebalancing that...

We discuss performance of some known market anomalies like equal-weighted index, low volatility stock index, factor anomalies of Andrea Frazzini, Ronen Israel and Tobias J. Moskowitz. We suggest the utilization of these anomalies through dynamic risk allocation in portfolios based on these...

We study a concept of dynamic leverage which is a risk measure generalizing traditional value at risk type measures. This measure is suited for hedge funds and can be applied to quantify risk in a fund of hedge funds. Dynamic leverage depends on the level of fund volatility, time horizon and...

Leveraged ETFs provide a convenient mechanism to dynamically change portfolio exposure. A classical portfolio insurance strategy of Black-Jones-Perold can be easily implemented with leveraged ETFs. More complex dynamic portfolio strategies that also can be implemented using leveraged ETFs. We...