In Japan, the steady aging of the population dictates that whatever the outcome of the current debate on public pension reform, private pensions will become more important. Traditional defined benefit (DB) corporate pensions are unlikely to become more prevalent than they are today, however, due...

Both the United States and Australia have multi-pillar retirement systems that include a public component and a private component. Increasingly, the private component consists of a defined contribution plan. At the outset, this paper provides an overview of the retirement systems of the U.S. and...

The Central Provident Fund (CPF), Singapore's public pension, is a prefunded, defined contribution pension plan. As average longevity increased, policy makers grew concerned over the fact that participants bear the burden from longevity risk, and a new program to annuitize a portion of CPF...

This article calls attention to the Department of Labor's imposition of the “prudent investor rule” on financial advisers to retirement savers. The article also canvasses the customary role of an investment policy statement in promoting compliance with the prudent investor rule by...

In this paper we compare changes in asset allocations between mutual funds held in defined contribution pension plans and funds held by other investors. We investigate how flows into equity and fixed income mutual funds depend on macroeconomic conditions. We find that defined contribution plans...

Millions of defined benefit pensioners must select a pension insurance method. We present a framework for making this decision within the context of US military veterans' Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP). Federal government subsidies generate a positive expected net payout for SBP. While insurance...

US state pension plans generally use overstated discount rates based on historical performance, creating the appearance of healthy funding at the cost of future underfunding. Conversely, adopting a US Treasury discount rate, or another alternative suggested by previous literature, would cause...

Collectively, Americans are woefully unprepared financially for retirement. This retirement problem actually reflects a collection of diverse issues. This paper identifies the most important ones: longevity; access; contributions; portability; behavioral mistakes; funded status; expenses; and...

In this paper we analyze the impact hedging longevity risk can have on a pension fund's funding ratio volatility and ALM strategy. Our model captures all relevant aspects of the ALM problem and is calibrated to industry statistics; however, we've sacrificed model complexity to make the solution...