In a sample of seven large defined contribution (DC) plans, automatic enrollment reduces differences in savings and investment behavior associated with race and ethnicity. Participation rates rise across the board with automatic enrollment, but particularly for blacks and Hispanics....

There is reason to believe that technological approaches can help promote voluntary saving in 401(k) retirement accounts. Working with Vanguard, a leading 401(k) plan administrator, we are evaluating the impact of introducing innovations to websites made available to retirement plan...

We study the effects of a large U.S. hybrid robo-adviser on the portfolios of previously self- directed investors. Across all investors, robo-advising reduces investors' holdings in money market mutual funds and increases bond holdings. It also reduces idiosyncratic risk by lowering the holdings...

We use a broad survey to elicit investor needs and their satisfaction in the context of financial advice. We provide evidence that traditionally-advised individuals do not hire financial advisors mainly to maximize portfolio returns. They instead hire financial advisors to satisfy a broader set...

Innovations in statistical technology have sparked concerns about distributional impacts across categories such as race and gender. Theoretically, as statistical technology improves, distributional consequences depend on how changes in functional forms interact with cross-category distributions...

We scrape a comprehensive set of US firms’ privacy policies, and study them alongside firms' web data extraction behaviour. We find considerable and systematic variation in privacy policies along multiple dimensions including ease of access, length, readability, and clarity, both within and...