The Dutch pension fund system, considered among the best in the world, successfully combines a first-pillar flat-rate pension for all residents with a labor-related second pillar and voluntary savings accounts as the third pillar. This paper describes the main institutional characteristics of...

Collective pension arrangements tend to yield higher risk-adjusted pension benefits than individual plans due to intergenerational risk sharing and the lack of annuity conversion risk. These benefits pose the implicit assumption that the pension fund has an infinite horizon, while we observe...

Administrative costs per participant appear to vary widely across pension funds in different countries. These costs are important because they reduce the rate of return on the investments of pension funds, and consequently raise the cost of retirement security. Using unique data on 90 pension...

Administrative costs per participant appear to vary widely across pension funds in different countries. These costs are important because they reduce the rate of return on the investments of pension funds, and consequently raise the cost of retirement security. Using unique data on 90 pension...

The structure and organization of pension systems vary considerably across countries. Pension fund regulation and supervision are two characteristics of pension systems that exemplify such variation. This paper provides a structured approach to measure cross-country differences in the intensity...

We report the effects of framing and default settings in annuity demand after conducting a survey-based experiment with over 3,000 members of a Dutch occupational pension plan. The participants were asked to allocate their real projected pension accrual between a life annuity and a partial lump...