Around the globe, the gradual move from defined benefit pensions to defined contribution pensions has increased the need for individual retirement planning. Examples of this include U.S. savings rates at historic lows, poor retirement prospects for citizens in developed countries, and the...

An important challenge facing employees and societies is saving and investing sufficient funds for a comfortable retirement. Research shows that human financial decision-making behavior is not always rational and that public trust in the economy can be lost. Surprisingly, neither better...

Although nearly half of retirees follow a nontraditional retirement path that involves partial retirement and/or unretirement (Maestas, 2010), unretirement has received little attention. As workforce demographics change and the supply of labor ages and retires, there is a growing need for...

Feldstein [1985] posed the questions of what would be the optimal level of retirement benefit, and what would be the optimal mix between the pay-as-you-go system and the funded pension system under the assumption of an exogenous interest rate. We reconsider the problem with the addition of a...

In a perfectly competitive market for annuities with full information, the price of annuities is equal to individuals' (discounted) survival probabilities. That is, prices are actuarially fair. In contrast, the pricing implicit in social security systems invariably allows for cross subsidization...

When information on longevity (survival functions) is unknown early in life, individuals have an interest to insure themselves against future 'risk-class' classification. Accordingly, the First-Best typically involves transfers across states of nature. Competitive equilibrium cannot provide such...