A rapidly growing public policy concern facing the United States is whether future generations of retired Americans, particularly those in the Baby Boomer and Gen X cohorts, will have adequate retirement incomes. There have been several policy studies in recent years that suggest that the...

The trend towards eliminating defined benefit (DB) pension plans in favor of defined contribution (DC) plans implies that increasing numbers of pension plan participants will bear the risk that final realized portfolio values may be insufficient to fund desired retirement cash flows. We compare...

Simplified disclosures can make comparisons between complex financial products easier, and increase consumer expertise. We use incentivized experiments to investigate whether and to what extent simpler information on fees and investment returns assists retirement plan members to make competent...

We examine the investment performance of over 160 thousand U.S. private pension plans. We find significant economies of scale in performance and administrative expenses, which are more prominent for defined benefit (DB) plans than for defined contribution (DC) plans. DC plans outperform...

This paper examines the effect of objective function structures on the optimal management decisions (in particular, asset allocation and surplus/deficit spread period) for a model defined benefit superannuation scheme. The objectives of employer-sponsors, members and trustees are identified,...

Defined-benefit (DB) pension funds, often underfunded, rely on the legal obligation of their sponsor to secure pension rights for individuals.Because that guarantee is risky, ways must be found to secure the pension promises. This paper is the first to identify the optimal pension fund...

Strategic use of a reverse mortgage can improve retirement outcomes. The benefits are non-linear in nature, as they relate to the synergies created by reducing sequence risk for portfolio withdrawals and to the non-recourse aspects of reverse mortgages that can potentially allow a client to...

We evaluate retirement savings adequacy using a large panel of U.S. workers with a 401(k) account. We model medical expenditures, longevity, investment risk, and the likelihood of withdrawals due to hardship, job separation, and reaching age 59 1/2. Based on their current account balances,...

We examine the effects of a 2012 regulatory reform that mandated fee and performance disclosures for the investment options in 401(k) plans. We show that participants became significantly more attentive to expense ratios and short-term performance after the reform. The disclosure effects are...