Public pay-as-you-go pensions still form the dominant pillar of old-age provision in Germany. This is in marked contrast to the situation in Anglo-Saxon countries. It has advantages if labour markets are strong, e.g., following a quick recovery from the Great Recession. It has disadvantages, as...

This study explored the psychological mechanisms that underlie the retirement planning and saving tendencies of Dutch and American workers. Participants were 988 Dutch and 429 Americans, 25-64 years of age. Analyses were designed to: (a) examine the extent to which structural variables were...

This paper studies empirically the consequences of retirement on health. We make use of a targeted retirement offer to army employees 55 years of age or older. Before the offer was implemented in the Swedish defense, the normal retirement age was 60 years of age. Estimating the effect of the...

This paper studies empirically the consequences of retirement on health. We make use of a targeted retirement offer to army employees 55 years of age or older. Before the offer was implemented in the Swedish defense, the normal retirement age was 60 years of age. Estimating the effect of the...

This paper incorporates retirement saving incentives into the Tax Policy Center microsimulation model and analyzes the distributional effects of current tax preferences for saving. As a share of income, tax-preferred saving incentives provide the largest benefits to households with income...

This paper reviews principles of behavioral finance as applicable to retirement withdrawal planning, discusses common retirement planning problems, reviews relevant law, and proposes an application of Thaler and Sunstein's NUDGE (2008). The paper includes a proposal for modification of federal...

This article analyzes the pros and cons of making a Roth IRA conversion, the mechanics to do the conversion, and how to undo it. The strategy takes on new importance in the years 2011 and 2012 with the looming 3.8% health care tax on investment income beginning in 2013. IRA owners may want to...

This stochastic simulation analysis compares funding costs and volatilities for private sponsors of traditional defined benefit (DB), pension equity (PE), cash balance (CB), and defined contribution (DC) retirement plans. Plan provisions of equivalent benefit generosity in the different plan...

This paper examines the impact of the timing of contributions to defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) plans on investment returns. I show that net contributions to DB plans are counter-cyclical, while net contributions to DC plans are uncorrelated with the business cycle. The...

To establish current savings behavior, one necessary measurement of retirement preparation is identifying the percentage of workers with employment-based retirement plans, as well as understanding the characteristics of workers with and without access to such programs. The findings from this...