March 2018

26Mar

The Time Has Come to Revisit Solvency Funding Rules

By Norma L. Nielson (University of Calgary - Haskayne School of Business) Canadians are not fond of hearing news about people losing their hard-earned pensions because their employer misused the money. The thought of some Working Joe or Jane being deprived of a pension, after a lifetime of working for a company, is naturally repugnant. That is why regulations around defined-benefit pension plans are designed to force employers to keep their pension funds sufficiently solvent. But there are many ways...

March 26, 2018
Articles, Pension design, Regulation, ,
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19Mar

When I’m Sixty-four: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them

By Teresa Ghilarducci A crisis is looming for baby boomers and anyone else who hopes to retire in the coming years. In When I'm Sixty-Four, Teresa Ghilarducci, the nation's leading authority on the economics of retirement, explains how to confront this crisis head-on, revealing the causes behind the increasingly precarious economics of old age in America and proposing a bold plan to guarantee retirement security for every working citizen. Retirement is one of the hallmarks of a prosperous, civilized market...

March 19, 2018
Books, Pension design, Savings, ,
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11Mar

Evaluating Retirement Strategies: A Utility-Based Approach

By Javier Estrada (IESE Business School) & Mark Kritzman (Windham Capital Management) Retirees need to make two critical financial decisions, namely, the withdrawal rate and the asset allocation of their portfolios. We propose a methodology that retirees, and particularly advisors, could use to make these decisions in an optimal way. We introduce a new variable, the coverage ratio, and a theoretical approach, based on utility. Our approach can be used to make optimal decisions during both the accumulation and the...

March 11, 2018
Articles, Investing, Savings, , , ,
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11Mar

Causes and Characteristics of Population Aging

By Kyounghoon Park (The Bank of Korea) Korea’s level of population aging remains lower than the OECD average. However, the pace of population aging in Korea is faster than that of many other member countries, as its total fertility rate is the lowest among OECD countries while its life expectancy exceeds the OECD average. Using panel data from OECD member countries, this paper divides the common causes of population aging in OECD countries into declining fertility rate and increasing life...

March 11, 2018
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, , ,
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February 2018

19Feb

Save More Tomorrow: Practical Behavioral Finance Solutions to Improve 401(k) Plans

By Shlomo Benartzi One of the world’s top experts in behavioral finance offers innovative strategies for improving 401(k) plans. Half of Americans do not have access to a retirement saving plan at their workplace. Of those who do about a third fail to join. And those who do join tend to save too little and often make unwise investment decisions. In short, the 401(k) world is in crisis, and workers need help. Save More Tomorrow provides that help by focusing on the...

February 19, 2018
Books, Pension design, Savings,
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19Feb

How Persistent Low Expected Returns Alter Optimal Life Cycle Saving, Investment, and Retirement Behavior

By Vanya Horneff, Raimond Maurer, Olivia S. Mitchell This paper explores how an environment of persistent low returns influences saving, investing, and retirement behaviors, as compared to what in the past had been thought of as more “normal” financial conditions. Our calibrated lifecycle dynamic model with realistic tax, minimum distribution, and Social Security benefit rules produces results that agree with observed saving, work, and claiming age behavior of U.S. households. In particular, our model generates a large peak at the...

February 19, 2018
Articles, Investing, Savings, , ,
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January 2018

22Jan

The Retirement Survival Guide: How to Make Smart Financial Decisions in Good Times and Bad

By Julie Jason Given today’s dire headlines, planning a secure retirement has become a more critical task than ever. This revised edition of Julie Jason’s award-winning guide—updated to reflect current laws and statistics—will help Americans seeking safety and stability in a time of economic change. In addition to showing those on the verge of retirement how to create their own “personal pension,” investment educator Jason deftly guides prospective retirees through the otherwise bewildering process of evaluating their needs, anticipating future...

January 22, 2018
Books, Investing, Pension design, Savings, , ,
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December 2017

30Dec

How to Invest and Spend Wealth in Retirement? A Utility-Based Analysis

By Servaas van Bilsen (University of Amsterdam), A. Lans Bovenberg (Tilburg University - Center for Economic Research (CentER); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research)) & Roger J. A. Laeven (University of Amsterdam - Amsterdam School of Economics) This paper explores the optimal consumption and investment behavior of a retiree who derives utility from the ratio between consumption and an endogenous habit. By developing a non-trivial linearization to the budget...

December 30, 2017
Articles, Investing, Savings, , ,
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23Dec

The Modern Tontine: An Innovative Instrument for Longevity Risk Management in an Aging Society

By Jan-Hendrik Weinert (Goethe University Frankfurt - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration) & Helmut Gründl (Goethe University Frankfurt - Department of Finance; International Center for Insurance Regulation) The changing social, financial and regulatory frameworks, such as an increasingly aging society, the current low interest rate environment, as well as the implementation of Solvency II, lead to the search for new product forms for private pension provision. In order to address the various issues, these new product forms should reduce...

December 23, 2017
Aging, Articles, Investing, Pension design, , , ,
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04Dec

Securing Lifelong Retirement Income: Global Annuity Markets and Policy

By Olivia S. Mitchel Interest in longevity and longevity risk management is burgeoning, as government and regulatory agencies are increasingly conscious of the potential risks and benefits of longer lifespans. Commercial and industrial organizations, especially within the financial sector, are awakening to the opportunities presented by population aging, along with the new array of financial insurance instruments to manage longevity risk, which more sophisticated markets are making possible. This volume explores three main themes: the need for products to manage...

December 4, 2017
Books, Corporate Governance, Investing, Regulation, , ,
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