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...

Algorithms hold great potential to lower costs and democratize access to a wide variety of consumer services. How do humans interact with algorithms, and what are the major barriers to algorithmic adoption? We answer these questions using a structural model applied to unique data that captures...

Target date funds in corporate retirement plans grew from $5B in 2000 to $734B in 2018, partly because federal regulation sanctioned these as default investments in automatic enrollment plans. We show that adopters delegated pension investment decisions to fund managers selected by plan...

Most workers in defined contribution retirement plans are inattentive portfolio managers: only a few engage in any trading at all, and only a tiny minority trades actively. Using a rich new dataset on 1.2 million workers in over 1,500 plans, we find that most 401(k) plan participants are...

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...

Some eleven million 401(k) plan participants take a concentrated equity position in their retirement savings account, investing more than 20% of the balance in their employer's common stock. Yet investing in the stock of one's employer is a risky investment on two counts: single securities are...