The Pension Protection Act of 2006 identified target-date funds as an appropriate default investment for defined contribution retirement plans. Using the 2009 National Financial Capability Study, this paper examines the relation between investor sophistication and the decision to primarily...

Little in the scholarly economics literature is directed specifically to stable value funds, although they occupy a leading place among retirement investment vehicles. They are offered in almost half of all defined contribution plans in the USA, with more than $800 billion dollars worth of...

Setting an adequate level for the fees charged by pension fund administrators is a key design element for policymakers when establishing a second pension pillar. A proper balance between the interest of future pensioners and the ones of administrators is required, but an optimal level of fees is...

This paper examines the impact of the timing of contributions to defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) plans on investment returns. I show that net contributions to DB plans are counter-cyclical, while net contributions to DC plans are uncorrelated with the business cycle. The...

There is a paucity of academic literature on stable value funds, although they occupy such a prominent place among retirement investment vehicles. They are offered in roughly one half of all defined contribution plans in the USA, with over $640 billion dollars worth of assets under management....

• We offer the first empirical exploration of fixed indexed annuity returns based upon actual contracts that were sold and actual interest that was credited.• Annuity returns have been competitive with alternative portfolios of stocks and bonds.• Their design has limited the downside...

Mutual funds have traditionally attracted retail investors seeking diversified market exposure. While the focus has historically been on asset liquidity and quality, recent attention has turned to assessing fund liquidity and the risks of asset fire sales. Our study analyzes Israeli mutual...

Hedge funds go beyond their statements on the transaction purpose in the beneficial ownership report Schedule 13 D by stating their activism objectives additionally in a letter to the CEO or board in more than one of ten activism events. Reactance theory indicates that the separate communication...

We study a regulation that increased mutual funds' risk salience through name change. Using daily fund flow data and several identification strategies, we find that requiring certain fixed income mutual funds to affix an exclamation mark ("!") to their names caused a statistically and...

In recent decades, investors have wielded their voting power to influence the direction of corporate policy. Although mutual funds have widely varying voting patterns and predictable ideological disagreements, little is known about whether their underlying investors have similar preferences. I...