Oregon recently launched an automatic-enrollment retirement savings program for private sector workers lacking access to other workplace retirement plans. We analyze participation choices, account balances, and inflow/outflow data using administrative records between August 2018 and April 2020....

Many investors purchase mutual funds through intermediated channels, paying brokers or financial advisors for fund selection and advice. This article attempts to quantify the benefits that investors enjoy in exchange for the costs of these services. We study broker-sold and direct-sold funds...

When a collection of specialists organize as an exchange, each can reap net private benefits at the expense of the exchange by quoting a privately optimal pricing schedule. Coordination makes all specialists and customers better off, but requires a system of monitoring and punishment that breaks...

Because life annuities can increase the level and decrease the volatility of lifetime consumption, economists have long been puzzled by the low demand for life annuities. One potential rational explanation is that adverse selection drives up life annuity prices, which drives down demand. We...

Because life annuities can increase the level and decrease the volatility of lifetime consumption, economists have long been puzzled by the low demand for life annuities. One potential rational explanation is that adverse selection drives up life annuity prices, which drives down demand. We...

Economists have long been puzzled by the low demand for life annuities. To shed new light on this puzzle, we study payout choices in the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System, where each retiree must choose between a lump sum and a life annuity. Notably, the average life annuity we study is...

Oregon's Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) is a rich setting in which to study the effect of pension design on employer costs and employee retirement-timing decisions. PERS pays retirees the maximum benefit calculated using three formulas that can be characterized as defined benefit...

The answer depends on how broker clients would have invested in the absence of broker recommendations. To identify counterfactual retirement portfolios, we exploit time-series variation in access to brokers by new plan participants. When brokers are available, they are chosen by new participants...