Default investment options in retirement plans are a potent influence on member choice. Little is known about how plans set them. We investigate how retirement plan providers choose default investment strategies for passive members. We interview plan executives and survey members during a review...

We examine the behavior of members of an industry-wide pension fund to assess both the prevalence of defaults and their impact on retirement savings. Our empirical investigations show that preferences, demographic characteristics and labor mobility matter greatly when it comes to the low active...

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 combine survey data from retirement plan members with information from interviews with plan executives to get both perspectives on who accepts the default plan and default investment option and why. We use a natural experiment in default construction where a new regulatory framework required...