Most workers in defined contribution retirement plans are inattentive portfolio managers: only a few engage in any trading at all, and only a tiny minority trades actively. Using a rich new dataset on 1.2 million workers in over 1,500 plans, we find that most 401(k) plan participants are...

In an effort to improve 401(k) portfolio choices, many US plan sponsors are offering target maturity date (TM) lifecycle funds, which place younger workers into higher-equity-share portfolios and then automatically rebalance them into more conservative holdings as they near retirement age. Our...

We investigate how advisors' own health and survival assessments, and information about their advisees' health and survival probabilities, shape their recommendations regarding retirement spending and investment. Using experiments involving amateur and professional advisors, we show that...

We use the 529 college savings plan setting to investigate whether and why households make suboptimal choices to invest in local assets. We estimate that 67% of open accounts between 2010 and 2020 were located suboptimally due to the plans' tax inefficiencies and high expenses. Over the...