In the wake of the financial crisis and continued volatility in international capital markets, there is growing interest in mechanisms that can protect people against retirement account volatility. This paper explores the consequences for savers' wellbeing of implementing market-based retirement...

Life insurers use accounting and actuarial techniques to smooth reporting of firm assets and liabilities, seeking to transfer surpluses in good years to cover benefit payouts in bad years. Nevertheless, these techniques been criticized as they make it difficult to assess insurers' true financial...

This paper evaluates the extent of heterogeneity in time discounting among elderly Americans, as well as its role in explaining older peoples' key behaviors. We first show how older Americans evaluate simple (hypothetical) intertemporal choices in which payments now are compared with payments in...

This paper investigates whether exchanging the Social Security delayed retirement credit, currently paid as an increase in lifetime annuity benefits, for a lump sum would induce later claiming and additional work. We show that people would voluntarily claim about half a year later if the lump...

Life insurers use accounting and actuarial techniques to smooth reporting of firm assets and liabilities, seeking to transfer surpluses in good years to cover benefit payouts in bad year. Yet these techniques have been criticized as they make it difficult to assess insurers' true financial...

This paper investigates whether exchanging the Social Security delayed retirement credit (currently paid as an increase in lifetime annuity benefits) for a lump sum would induce later claiming and additional work. We show that people would voluntarily claim about half a year later if the lump...

This paper explores how an environment of persistent low returns influences saving, investing, and retirement behaviors, as compared to what in the past had been thought of as more “normal” financial conditions. Our calibrated lifecycle dynamic model with realistic tax, minimum distribution,...

We analyze the risks and rewards of moving from an unfunded defined benefit pension sys-tem to a funded plan for civil servants in Germany, allowing for alternative strategic contribu-tion and investment patterns using a Monte Carlo framework. For this purpose, we integrate traditional pension...

We analyze the risks and rewards of moving from an unfunded defined benefit pension system to a funded plan for civil servants in Germany, allowing for alternative portfolio mixes using a Monte Carlo framework and a Conditional Value at Risk metric. First, we estimate contributions as a percent...

We investigate how financial literacy shapes older Americans’ demand for financial advice. Using an experimental module fielded in the Health and Retirement Study, we show that financial literacy strongly improves the quality but not the quantity of financial advice sought. In particular, more...