Benjamin Franklin's original maxim found in Poor Richard's Almanac was actually "A penny saved is two pence clear" rather than the more commonly known "A penny saved is a penny earned." We believe he was getting at the notion that one risk-free penny is worth two pennies of expected but...

The neoclassical growth model is extended to include costly intermediated borrowing and lending between households. This is an important extension as substantial resources are used to intermediate the large amount of borrowing and lending between households. In 2007, in the United States, the...

The direct financial impact of the financial crisis has been to deal a heavy blow to investment-based pensions; many workers lost a substantial portion of their retirement saving. The financial sector implosion produced an economic crisis for the rest of the economy via high unemployment and...

In this review paper we recall a dynamic stochastic accumulation model for determining optimal decision between stock and bond investments during accumulation of pension savings. The model has been proposed and analyzed by the authors. We assume stock prices to be driven by a geometric Brownian...

We analyse the investment performance of a large sample of individuals investing in discretionary retirement savings products offered by a large Australian financial institution. This is of interest from the perspective of market efficiency and the ability of individuals to over or under-perform...

We investigate the risk-sharing implications of taxation associated with the option to convert a traditional IRA to Roth IRA. Although the conversion option may create value for savers by potentially reducing their tax burdens, the risk profile of their holdings may change. Delaying payment of...

A worker can contribute pre-tax dollars to a private pension plan. Under a progressive tax, this feature reduces income taxes. Ippolito (1986) argues that an individual in 1979 can reduce lifetime taxes by 20%. We re-examine his analysis using the complete time-series of US income tax history...

The collapse of sadly notorious American corporations whose retirement plans were primarily invested in company stocks has aroused a growing interest in understanding employees' investment decisions about company stock. American 401(k) plans and the French Company Savings Plans have in common to...

This paper investigates the investment behaviors of 44,649 employees working in a CAC 40 index listed company. The company savings plan offers its employees a choice among various asset categories generally listed by financial institutions. We first describe employees' saving behaviors for each...

A line of recent studies cast doubt on the efficacy of the lifecycle investment strategy, which calls for switching into a more conservative investment portfolio as retirement approaches, as a suitable way to provide for the retirement needs of workers with defined-contribution pensions. After...