Employee benefits journal最新文献

{"title":"It's a Small World after All: Using Social Network Analysis to Investigate Systemic Risk in the Australian Superannuation Sector","authors":"Rob Nicholls, M. Donald, K. Liu","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2622304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2622304","url":null,"abstract":"Australia’s superannuation (pension) sector is extraordinarily large by almost any measure. The system is the fourth largest in the world with assets under management exceeding $A2 trillion (€1.3 trillion). Approximately two thirds of the system ($A1.2 trillion) is managed in the large-scale intermediated superannuation funds that are the subject of this study. At one level, these funds appear to be functionally and financially independent of each other. However, they are linked by the common use of service providers. Indeed, the regulatory approach, for those entities that are actually regulated is to treat each of the service providers in separate silos.This paper examines the effects of the service provider linkages using a network science approach. It demonstrates that social network analysis and network science theory can be used to describe the level of interconnectedness within the Australian superannuation sector. It shows that the system has some ‘small world’ characteristics and analyses the consequences of these characteristics. In particular, it concludes that a more holistic regulatory approach is required in order to be able to identify systemic risk, which is not apparent from the current silo-based analysis.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86435611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Are Gender Differences Emerging in the Retirement Patterns of the Early Boomers?","authors":"K. Cahill, Michael D. Giandrea, J. Quinn","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2645853","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2645853","url":null,"abstract":"Controlling for career employment later in life, the retirement patterns of men and women in America have resembled one another for much of the past two decades. Is this relationship coming to an end? Recent research suggests that the retirement patterns of the Early Boomers – those born between 1948 and 1953 – have diverged from those of earlier cohorts. Gender differences appear to be emerging as well in the way that career men and women exit the labor force, after nearly two decades of similarities. This paper explores these gender differences in detail to help determine whether we are witnessing a break in trend or merely a short-term occurrence. We use data on three cohorts of older Americans from the nationally-representative, longitudinal Health and Retirement Study (HRS) that began in 1992. We explore by gender the types of job transitions that occur later in life and explore, in particular, the role of four potentially relevant determinants: the presence of dependent children; a parent in need of caregiving assistance; occupational status on the career job; and self-employment status. We find that, among career men and women, child and parental caregiving are not significant drivers of the retirement transitions of the Early Boomers, all else equal. Gender differences that may exist with respect to these characteristics are therefore unlikely to lead to persistent gender differences in retirement patterns. In contrast, self employment continues to be a statistically significant determinant of bridge job transitions and phased retirement. This finding, combined with the fact that men are much more likely than women to be self employed later in life, could lead to some differences by gender going forward, though the impact is likely to be limited given that the large majority of older workers are in wage-and-salary employment. Older Americans – both men and women – are responding to their economic environment by working later in life and exiting the labor force gradually. While some determinants of these decisions likely impact men and women differently, gender differences with respect to the retirement patterns of the Early Boomers appear to be the result of broader macroeconomic forces. The evidence to date suggests that gender differences may dissipate as the recovery ensues.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88306343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Who is Internationally Diversified? Evidence from 296 401(K)","authors":"G. Bekaert, Kenton Hoyem, Wei-Yin Hu, Enrichetta Ravina","doi":"10.3386/W21236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W21236","url":null,"abstract":"We examine the international equity allocations of over 3 million individuals in 296 401(k) plans over the 2006-2011 period. These allocations show enormous cross-individual variation, ranging between zero and over 75%, as well as an upward trend that is only partially accounted for by the slight decrease in importance of the US market relative to the world market. International equity allocations also display strong cohort effects, with younger cohorts investing more internationally than older ones, but also each cohort investing more internationally over time. This finding suggests that the home bias phenomenon may slowly disappear over time. Worker’s salary has a positive effect on international allocations, while account balance has a negative one, but these effects are not economically large. Education, financial literacy and the fraction of foreign-born population measured at the zip code level have strong positive effects on international diversification, consistent with familiarity and information stories. In addition, states with more exports have higher international allocations.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"163 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76758551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Do Individuals Make Sensible Health Insurance Decisions? Evidence from a Menu with Dominated Options","authors":"Saurabh Bhargava, G. Loewenstein, Justin R. Sydnor","doi":"10.3386/W21160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/W21160","url":null,"abstract":"The recent expansion of health-plan choice has been touted as increasing competition and enabling people to choose plans that fit their needs. This study provides new evidence challenging these proposed benefits of expanded health-insurance choice. We examine health-insurance decisions of employees at a large U.S. firm where a new plan menu included a large share of financially dominated options. This menu offers a unique litmus test for evaluating choice quality since standard risk preferences and beliefs about one’s health cannot rationalize enrollment into the dominated plans. We find that a majority of employees – and in particular, older workers, women, and low earners – chose dominated options, resulting in substantial excess spending. Most employees would have fared better had they instead been enrolled in the single actuarially-best plan. In follow-up hypothetical-choice experiments, we observe similar choices despite far simpler menus. We find these choices reflect a severe deficit in health insurance literacy and naive considerations of health risk and price, rather than a sensible comparison of plan value. Our results challenge the standard practice of inferring risk attitudes and assessing welfare from insurance choices, and raise doubts whether recent health reforms will deliver their promised benefits.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85988479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Target Date Funds: Marketing or Finance?","authors":"A. Chen, Carla Mereu, R. Stelzer","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2579670","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2579670","url":null,"abstract":"Since Target Date Funds (TDFs) became one of the default investment strategies for the 401(k) defined contribution (DC) beneficiaries, they have developed rapidly. Usually they are structured according to the principle “young people should invest more in equities”. Is this really a good recommendation for DC beneficiaries to manage their investment risk? The present paper relies on dynamic asset allocation to investigate how to optimally structure TDFs by realistically modelling the contributions made to 401(k) plans. We show that stochastic contributions can play an essential role in the determination of optimal investment strategies. Depending on the correlation of the contribution process with the market’s stock, we find that an age-increasing equity holding can be optimal too. This result highly depends on how the contribution rule is defined.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76577058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tontine Pensions","authors":"J. Forman, Michael J. Sabin","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2393152","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2393152","url":null,"abstract":"Tontines are investment vehicles that can be used to provide retirement income. A tontine is a financial product that combines the features of an annuity and a lottery. In a simple tontine, a group of investors pool their money together to buy a portfolio of investments and, as investors die, their shares are forfeited, with the entire fund going to the last surviving investor. Over the years, this “last survivor takes all” approach has made for some great fiction. For example, in an episode of the popular television series M*A*S*H, Colonel Sherman T. Potter, as the last survivor of his World War I unit, got to open the bottle of French cognac that he and his buddies bought (and share it with his Korean War compatriots). On the other hand, sometimes the fictional plots involved nefarious characters trying to kill off the rest of the investors to “inherit” the fund. Of course, tontines can be designed to avoid such mischief. For example, instead of distributing all of the contributions to the last survivor, a tontine could make periodic distributions. Indeed, tontines could be used to create “tontine annuities” that could be sold to individual investors. These tontine annuities would make periodic distributions to surviving investors, but unlike traditional tontines, tontine annuities would solicit new investors to replace those that have died. Structured in this way, a tontine annuity could operate in perpetuity. In this Article, we consider how the tontine principle could be used to create “tontine pensions” through which large employers could provide retirement income for their employees. These tontine pensions would have several major advantages over most of today’s pensions, annuities, and other retirement income products. At the outset, Part I of this Article explains how the current U.S. retirement system works and how retirees can use pensions, annuities, and other financial products to generate retirement income. Next, Part II offers a step-by-step explanation of how tontine funds, tontine annuities, and tontine pensions could work today. It then compares tontine pensions with traditional defined benefit pension plans, defined contribution plans, and so-called “hybrid pensions” (e.g., cash balance plans). In particular, Part II shows that tontine pensions would have two major advantages over traditional pensions. First, unlike traditional pensions — which are frequently underfunded — tontine pensions would always be fully funded. Second, unlike a traditional pension — in which the pension plan sponsor must bear all the investment and actuarial risks — with a tontine pension, the plan sponsor bears neither of those risks. These two features should make tontine pensions a particularly attractive alternative for employers who wish to provide retirement income security for their employees but want to avoid the risks associated with a traditional pension. Part III then develops a model tontine pension for a typical large employer. We then use ","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"59 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91217567","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Defusing the Debt Time Bomb: Challenges and Solutions","authors":"P. Booth, R. Bourne","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3903902","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3903902","url":null,"abstract":"The government’s finances are currently on an unsustainable trajectory. Whilst current levels of government debt are below the levels seen in previous periods in history, accumulating such large levels of debt during a long period of peacetime is more or less unknown. Government debt figures do not include commitments to future spending either: governments do not account in the same prudent way that companies are required to account. An ageing population means that on unchanged policies the cost of providing age-related spending such as healthcare, pensions and social care will rise substantially over the next five decades, sending overall debt on an upward trajectory. According to the government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) a permanent fiscal adjustment (tax increases and/or spending cuts) of 1.3 per cent of national income will be necessary from 2018/19 in order to ensure that the debt-to-GDP ratio falls to 20 per cent by 2063/64. However, the OBR figures make heroic assumptions about healthcare productivity and also assume that there will be a fiscal adjustment of 5.2 per cent of national income before 2018/19. In other words, spending needs to be cut by around 6.5 per cent of national income from now and for the foreseeable future to hit a government debt target of 20 per cent of national income by 2063/64. Such a measure will not create room to reverse recent tax increases. If more realistic assumptions about healthcare productivity, immigration and spending priorities are made, spending would need to be cut by 9.6 per cent of national income now and for the foreseeable future to hit a debt target of 20 per cent of national income in 50 years’ time. This is equivalent to about one quarter of all government spending or one half of all social protection spending. Other approaches to the analysis of the public finances reach similar conclusions. During its term of office, the government has taken action that has affected the long-term fiscal position detrimentally. Abolishing contracting-out of the state pension system, the implementation of the ‘triple lock’ on pension increases and ring-fencing health spending have been especially unhelpful. The government’s long-term fiscal position would be improved by following a combination of the following policies: – Restricting state benefits in various ways, for example only linking the state pension to price increases, raising significantly the state pension age and introducing user-charges in healthcare. – Various forms of deregulation aimed at raising productivity and labour market participation. – Substantial pre-funding of pensions and healthcare.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88858502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Insurance Markets for the Elderly","authors":"Hanming Fang","doi":"10.1016/BS.HESPA.2016.05.003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/BS.HESPA.2016.05.003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81758668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Retirement Plans and Prospects for Retirement Income Adequacy","authors":"Jack L. VanDerhei","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2523071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2523071","url":null,"abstract":"Will Americans have enough to live on in retirement? This paper attempts to address that question for the Baby Boomer and Gen Xer generations. While it is widely accepted that employment-based retirement plans have played a significant role in providing retirement income to American workers, this paper quantifies the impact that those programs have in the determination of retirement income adequacy. The analysis in this paper reveals that one of the most important factors in determining whether Gen Xers would have sufficient retirement resources is eligibility for participation in an employment-based defined contribution plan.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86995871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Does Retirement Make You Happy? A Simultaneous Equations Approach","authors":"Raquel Fonseca, A. Kapteyn, Jinkook Lee, Gema Zamarro","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2566755","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2566755","url":null,"abstract":"Continued improvements in life expectancy and fiscal insolvency of public pensions have led to an increase in pension entitlement ages in several countries, but its consequences for subjective well-being are largely unknown. Financial consequences of retirement complicate the estimation of effects of retirement on subjective well-being as financial circumstances may influence subjective well-being, and therefore, the effects of retirement are likely to be confounded by the change in income. At the same time, unobservable determinants of income are probably related with unobservable determinants of subjective wellbeing, making income possibly endogenous if used as control in subjective wellbeing regressions. To address these issues, we estimate a simultaneous model of retirement, income, and subjective well-being while accounting for time effects and unobserved individual effects. Public pension arrangements (replacement rates, eligibility rules for early and full retirement) serve as instrumental variables. We use data from HRS and SHARE for the period 2004-2010. We find that depressive symptoms are negatively related to retirement while life satisfaction is positively related. Remarkably, income does not seem to have a significant effect on depression or life satisfaction. This is in contrast with the correlations in the raw data that show significant relations between income and depression and life satisfaction. This suggests that accounting for the endogeneity of income in equations explaining depression or life satisfaction is important.","PeriodicalId":76903,"journal":{"name":"Employee benefits journal","volume":"53 1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86067731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}