What is the optimal retirement age? This paper looks at the optimal retirement age from various perspectives. Most of the current pension laws relating to retirement age were codified decades ago, and they have become badly out of date given what we now know about longevity, about health and...

When a Canadian expects to face higher tax rates in the future, where should savings be put? The standard advice is… ‘when you expect your marginal tax rate to rise in the future, contribute to a Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) now, but delay claiming the tax deduction'. This paper...

Many job-losers suffer large and persistent losses in earnings capacity. For displaced workers who are age-eligible, one reaction to these losses is to begin claiming Social Security retirement benefits. We use administrative earnings records from the Social Security Administration's Continuous...

This paper summarizes scientific thought on the likelihood of Climate Change and explores potential implications for retirement planning. The thoughts of several authors are combined to place Climate Change risk within the context of Black Swans and Deep Risk and describe implications for...

This chapter reviews the literature on intergenerational risk sharing (IRS). We explore to what extent and how a market economy with an appropriate institutional setting can replicate a social planner's solution in models with increasing levels of complexity. In particular, we do this for...

We develop and estimate a life-cycle consumption savings model in which observed genetic variation is allowed to affect wealth accumulation through several distinct channels. We focus on genetic markers that predict educational attainment, aggregated into a predictive index called a polygenic...

Financial planners assume that retirees have a strong preference for consistent, predictable spending. Their widely used rule of thumb, the 4% rule, was developed to identify the maximum spending level that could be maintained throughout retirement. In stark contrast, the standard advice from...

Both data and people's self-reports reveal that there is an undersaving problem. Behavioral economics seeks to explain this phenomenon with the concept of hyperbolic discounting. In essence, short-term actions are inconsistent with long-term goals. This is applied to the German pension system in...

How can regulation in an era of personal responsibility aid people to make the optimal decisions about their future risks, savings, and retirement? This study aims to deepen our understanding of how different age groups process choices in relation to future risk and retirement planning in...

To assess the life-cycle welfare effects of pension reforms, we provide a dynamic stochastic model of saving, portfolio choice and retirement with a pension system that operates according to the notional defined contribution principle.Relying on the exogenous variation from a sequence of Italian...