The introduction of direct contribution 401(k) retirement accounts in the late 1970's brought about an institutional shift in the relationship between private employers and workers with regard to financial risk and decision making involved with retirement savings, which can impact financial...

Whereas there is ample evidence that life-contingent income products (life annuities) have the potential to improve individual welfare, combining them with health-contingent income products (resulting in so-called life care annuities) would serve to further increase welfare for individuals who...

Popular press and some practitioners have warned against threats that buying risky assets pose on agents saving for retirement, children education and other uses. This paper shows that in a standard two-period general equilibrium model where some savers have no risk-sharing motives, there exists...

This paper studies a novel channel through which climate risks affect households’ portfolio choices: a stringent climate change regulation elevates labor income risk for households employed by high-emission industries which in turn discourages households' financial risk-taking. Using staggered...

This paper examines how two instruments—annuities with lifelong benefits purchased using defined contribution (DC) plan assets, and social security annuities—should be considered jointly to optimize household lifetime wellbeing. Understanding how these interact is of key importance in order...

Financial researchers agree that allocating money to employer stock in a 401(k) plan is a poor strategy, yet many employees do so. Not only does this investment strategy bear unrewarded idiosyncratic risk, but it also correlates employees' retirement portfolios with their human capital. I find...

A well established believe in the pension industry is that collective pension funds should take more stock market risk (compared to individual retirement accounts) since risk may be shared with future generations. We extend the OLG model of Gollier (2008) by adding labor income risk in the...

To establish existing savings behavior, it is necessary to estimate the percentage of workers with an employment-based retirement plan, and to know the characteristics of workers with and without a plan - the subject of this paper. The findings show that there has been a significant increase in...

For pension-savers, a low payoff is a financial disaster. Such investors will most likely prefer left-skewed payoff distributions over right-skewed payoff distributions. We explore how such distributions can be delivered. Cautious-relaxed utility measures are cautious in ensuring that payoffs...