This paper studies psychological biases in take-up of annuities, using an incentivized experiment with a probability-based sample (N = 3,038). Choosing an annuity was payoff-maximizing in the experiment at all prices, but take-up was incomplete and price elastic. Reformulating decisions as...

What is the optimal path of Social Security benefits for an individual who has retired with a stock of wealth, faces stochastic mortality, and has no access to annuities and no preferences for bequests? It is a deferred annuity in which the government annuity pays out zero for some periods and a...

Distribution choices by individuals retiring from CalSTRS are examined for participants that retired between 2016 and 2023. Women are much more likely to select a member-only annuity while a larger proportion of men select a J&S annuity that provide survivor benefits. Being married is a dominant...

An annuity is an insurance contract where a person (the annuitant) pays a premium upfront to obtain a stream of future payments until his or her death. To assess the value of an annuity, we calculate the ratio of the expected present value of annuity income to the annuity premium − this is...

Mathematical Interest Theory provides an introduction to how investments grow over time. This is done in a mathematically precise manner. The emphasis is on practical applications that give the reader a concrete understanding of why the various relationships should be true. Among the modern...

This paper investigates consumers' difficulty in valuing life annuities. Using a survey-based experiment, we show that the prices at which people are willing to buy annuities are substantially below the prices at which they are willing to sell them. This finding is not a simple endowment effect,...

We show that people have difficulty valuing annuities, and this, instead of a preference for lumpsums, helps explain observed low annuity demand. Although the median price at which people are willing to sell an annuity stream is close to the actuarial value, many responses diverge greatly from...

We show that people have difficulty valuing annuities, and this, instead of a preference for lumpsums, helps explain observed low annuity demand. Although the median price at which people are willing to sell an annuity stream is close to the actuarial value, many responses diverge greatly from...