Defined contribution plans, predominantly 401(k)s, are the primary source of personal retirement savings for American workers, making the investment decisions within these accounts a salient policy concern. These decisions are a result of two separate actions: the mutual fund options selected by the employer’s plan administrator and the specific funds chosen by the participant.

While considerable research has examined 401(k) participant decisions in isolation, surprisingly little attention has been focused on the choices made by plan administrators. The administrator’s role is clearly influential, particularly if, as indicated by prior research, 401(k) participants themselves do not make good choices. This brief, based on a prior study, addresses this research gap by focusing on the fund choices of 401(k) plan administrators and participants’ reactions to these choices.

This paper studies the relationship between retirement and mortality, using a unique administrative data set covering the full population of Norway. We make use of a series of retirement policy changes in Norway, which reduced the retirement age for a group of workers but not for others.

NAV-reformen gikk ut på at Aetat, trygdeetaten og deler av sosialtjenesten, i løpet av årene 2006 til 2011, skulle slås sammen til én felles etat, NAV. Parallelt med gjennomføringen av reformen, ble det satt i gang et omfattende evalueringsprosjekt i regi av Norges forskningsråd. Denne studien, som er en del av evalueringsprosjektet, ser på hvorvidt et av hovedmålene med reformen er nådd, nemlig målet om å få flere i arbeid – færre på trygd.

To adapt pension systems to demographic trends, many countries are reducing pay-as-you-go public pension levels and lifting retirement ages. In this context, funded pensions could play a major role to avoid adequacy gaps. Yet, as this paper shows, the coverage of funded private pensions, as measured by enrolment rates, is highly uneven across countries and between individuals, especially in voluntary systems.

The U. S. economy experienced a shift away from employment with coverage under a defined benefit (DB) pension plan during 1991-2009. Defined contribution (DC) plan coverage seems not to have risen much, if at all, for married men in the recent decade. Overall, the percent of the labor force covered by any pension type fell over the period 2001-2009, with most of the shift occurring in 2001-2003, as indicated by data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID).

This paper models policy responses to changes in solvency by Dutch occupational pension funds using a unique panel dataset containing the balance sheets of all registered pension funds in the Netherlands over a period of 15 years (1993–2007). The model describes how nominal pension rights are expanded, by e.g. indexation or backservice, or, on the contrary, how the current pension accumulation is skimmed, e.g. by setting the pension premium over its actuarially fair price to build buffers.

Rapporten undersöker pensionsutfall i det nya systemet med fokus på omfördelningsaspekterna. Skillnader i utfall för kvinnor och män med olika utbildning har varit en central del av uppdraget.

This paper takes stock of the evolution in pension systems and the challenges that remain for the future. It derives a typology of pension systems and uses this to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of alternative systems.

The life insurance and pensions sector manages large funds with a truly long time horizon. These investors therefore naturally seek long-dated assets to match their liabilities. Real assets or real cash flows are preferred in order to hedge against inflation, which is particularly relevant for pension funds in order to assure a decent purchasing power for their clients’ retirement income.

This paper addresses two policy questions with respect to public defined benefit (DB) pension schemes: Firstly, does a funded DB pension scheme increase welfare? In other words: do the gains from intergenerational sharing of capital market risks outweigh the labour market distortions from pension schemes? Secondly, how large is the commitment problem of pension funds after an adverse capital market shock?

1. mars vil det avholdes møte i Pensjonsforum med temaet "Levealder", med bidrag fra Aslaug Foss(SSB), Dennis Fredriksen (SSB) og Sissel Rødevand (Actecan). Neste møte avholdes 15.mars med temaet "Fripoliser", med bidrag fra Pål Lillevold (Aktuar), Runa K. Sæther (Finanstilsynet), Jan Otto Risebrobakken (Storebrand) og Mikkel Berg (Silver).

The retirement decision is under researched in developing and emerging countries, despite the topic’s close relation to many development issues such as poverty reduction and social security, and despite the fact that population ageing will increasingly challenge the developing world.