We develop an equilibrium theory of employer-sponsored retirement plan design using a behavioral contract theory approach. The operation of the labor market results in retirement plans that generally cater to, rather than correct, workers' mistakes. Our theory provides new explanations for a...

We study the extent to which retired households in Finland could supplement their mandatory pension benefits by releasing their equity. We also consider the tax treatment of different financial products that turn wealth into an income stream. In addition, we use a life cycle consumption-savings...

Most defined contribution pension plans pay benefits as lump sums, yet the US Treasury has recently encouraged firms to protect retirees from outliving their assets by converting a portion of their plan balances into longevity income annuities (LIA). These are deferred annuities which initiate...

The changing social, financial and regulatory frameworks, such as an increasingly aging society, the current low interest rate environment, as well as the implementation of Solvency II, lead to the search for new product forms for private pension provision. In order to address the various...

Economists have long been puzzled by the low demand for life annuities. To shed new light on this puzzle, we study payout choices in the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System, where each retiree must choose between a lump sum and a life annuity. Notably, the average life annuity we study is...

We analyze the long-standing “annuity puzzle” through the lens of behavioral economics. We provide novel evidence that lessens the extent of the puzzle and shed some additional light on the real drivers of the decision to annuitize. Last, we discuss the policy implications of our findings

We derive an expression for the lifetime ruin probability (LRP), defined as the probability a fixed consumption plan will deplete an investment portfolio prior to a retiree's stochastic time of death, assuming the investment return driving the portfolio obeys a jump-diffusion process. This is in...

Inflation for retirees is different from, and mostly higher than, the macroeconomic (average) inflation rate for the entire population. In the U.S. for example, the Consumer Price Index for the Urban population (CPI-U) calculated and reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has a lesser...

Some computational aspects of pension plans are discussed in the paper with applications for the pension system in the Czech Republic: (i) the gender problem for the pensions; (ii) the generation Life Tables; (iii) the problem of sustainability of the pensions in the Czech Republic. These...

We propose an optimization criterion that yields extraordinary consumption smoothing compared to the well known results of the life-cycle model. Under this criterion we solve the related consumption and investment optimization problem faced by individuals with preferences for intertemporal...