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 propose a ‘buy, hold, sell’ (BHS) deterministic lifecycle strategy that involves buying and holding assets until they are sold to generate income. Savings are invested entirely into a risky portfolio until a pre-specified ‘switch age’ and then entirely into a risk-free portfolio after...

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...