The worldwide financial crisis has wrought deep changes in capital and labor markets, old-age retirement systems, and household retirement and consumption patterns. Confidence has been shaken in both the traditional defined benefit and defined contribution plans. Around the world, plan sponsors, fiduciaries, policymakers, and households have gained a new awareness of retirement risk. When pressed to reform post-crisis, many would recommend enhancing financial advice for plan participants, emphasizing flexibility and the positive effect of working another one or two years to make up for investment losses in the downturn. Adding to this is the continuing need for financial education, essential as the retirement system moves increasingly toward personal account pensions. Perhaps most important of all is the need for greater understanding of risk throughout the retirement security system, along with new approaches to re-engineering retirement pensions. This volume explores the lessons to be learnt for retirement planning and long-term financial security in view of the massive shocks to stock markets, labour markets, and pension plans resulting from the financial crisis. It aims to rethink retirement in the new economic era, including the resilience of defined contribution plans and how defined benefit plans reacted to the financial crisis.

"Automatic" offers an innovative new way to think about how Americans can save for retirement.

Over the past quarter century, America's pension system has shifted away from defined benefit plans and toward defined contribution savings programs such as 401(k)s and IRAs. There is much to be done to improve the defined contribution system. Many workers fail to participate and those who do often contribute too little, invest the funds poorly, and are not adequately prepared to manage funds while in retirement.

To resolve these problems, the authors propose that employees should be automatically enrolled into a 401(k) plan when they are hired, with the right to opt out, change the amount that they contribute, or change investment choices if they choose. If the employer does not sponsor a 401(k) or similar retirement plan, they would be enrolled in a payroll deduction Automatic IRA. This vision of a transformed defined contribution system incorporates key positive features of defined benefit plans to improve retirement security. Employess contributions would increase over time, their investments would benefit from professional management and rebalancing, and they would receive lifetime income upon retirement. These automatic features will make the 401(k) and similar plans a more effective tool for retirement saving, and they can be extended to the many workers who do not currently have access to an employer plan.

In "Automatic," the authors present proposals to implement automatic features in all phases of the 401(k) and in IRAs for workers with no employer plan. They also draw from the experience of countries that have implemented automatic saving structures.

There is increasing pressure for all of us to take responsibility for our own financial security and wellbeing, but we often overlook how the benefits that come with a job can help us do that. Essential Personal Finance: A Practical Guide for Employees focuses on these valuable work benefits and shows how you can build on this important foundation to achieve financial security and your life goals. This unique book explores how making effective and practical use of these work benefits (such as pension scheme, life cover, sick pay, cheap loans, savings schemes and even financial coaching), means facing up to the behavioural biases we are all plagued with. Given that these can get in the way of even the best intentions, Essential Personal Finance tackles these biases head-on with practical ideas and tips for overcoming or harnessing them for good, and will help you to develop a positive and fruitful relationship with your money. With financial stress being a major cause of absenteeism and sick leave, low morale and lost productivity, the advice in this book also offers employers enormous benefits. By empowering employees through financial education and financial awareness, progressive employers will help them feel more in control of their lives, and experience less stress, resulting in higher morale and productivity. Offering a distinctive approach which combines academic insight with practical financial wisdom and tools, this is a must-have book for all employees. It will help you make the most of everything your job has to offer so you can worry less about money and live life to the full.

Pension Systems enters into the current lively debate on European pensions. The focus of the book is the analysis of public intervention in individuals' retirement choice, its rationale and the desirability of legislation introducing a sizeable and compulsory increase in retirement age, to face the prospects of swift population ageing. The book assesses the impact of different retirement rules on individual decisions, on the sustainability of social security systems and on labour market dynamics, and inquires whether mandatory retirement has not become an outdated feature of modern pension systems. The motivations behind public intervention in fixing compulsory retirement rules as well as the likely consequences of allowing the individual a higher responsibility in retirement choices are analysed. These issues are examined both theoretically and empirically and through a focus on country-specific patterns of retirement and on policy issues relevant at the European level. The impact of later retirement on the labour market is also investigated, considering the role of retirement rules in increasing employment. This comprehensive and topical book will appeal to academics and scholars of public finance as well as pensions experts and organisations.

Population ageing and the resulting pressures on existing pension systems constitutes one of the most important challenges modern societies will have to face over the coming decades. Although governments have responded to such pressures by adopting a plethora of pension reforms, the adaptation process is far from over. This book comprehensively documents developments in pension policy in eleven advanced industrial countries in Western Europe, East Asia and North America. In order to explore what population ageing means for the sustainability of pension systems, the authors present a detailed review of pension policy making over the past two decades and provide up-to-date analysis of current pension legislation. They examine the factors that can facilitate or impede the adaptation of pension systems and the features that shape and determine reforms. They also highlight the fact that although the path of reform taken by each country is somewhat different, the processes at work are often very similar. Ageing populations throughout the world are extremely reluctant to see their pension systems dismantled and are therefore prepared to mobilise in their defence. This process of mobilisation interacts with demographic pressures and institutional constraints to help determine the future direction of pension policy. The breadth of geographic coverage provides an almost global picture of the impact of ageing on pension reform, at least in terms of high income countries. Academics and students with an interest in economics, social policy, sociology and political science will find this a worthwhile and rewarding volume. It will also be of value to policymakers interested in how the problem of unsustainable pension systems can be resolved.

This book focuses on relatively unexplored areas in pension and health care arrangements, including financing, in East Asia. The book aims to fill the literature gap on social protection in East Asia by covering issues such as pension and health care arrangements in the depopulating high income countries of Japan and Korea; the challenges of the pay-out phase in Defined Contribution (DC) arrangements in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore; and the extension of coverage of social protection schemes in China, India, and Indonesia. It also reviews social protection from a much wider perspective and extends coverage of social protection in terms of both the proportion of the population with access to the social protection scheme and the types of risks faced by the households and by society as a whole. The book also gives attention to reforms of civil service pensions.

A comprehensive guide to all aspects of participation in the retirement programs of TIAA-CREF

An accessible and practical guide to personal finance that busts myths, clarifies jargons and clarifies the best options for building your wealth More and more people are reassessing their lives as a result of the pandemic. Many have left their jobs or reduced their hours. Others have resolved to work only as long as they must, retiring early to focus on families and friends, hobbies or travel. Meanwhile, employers all over the world are experimenting with a four-day week. Making the most of these choices requires having and growing enough money to enjoy your future life, without needing to worry about it running out. But when it comes to investing in a pension, there is a dizzying number of complex options available. This book is designed to provide clear, objective guidance that cuts through the jargon, giving you control over your financial future. The authors strip away the marketing-speak, and through simple graphs, charts and diagrams, provide an evidence-based money manual that you can use again and again. They also alert you to myths and get-rich-quick schemes everyone should avoid. It's a highly practical and refreshingly honest book, written by two independent experts who have seen how the investment industry works from the inside, and how it profits from complexity, ignorance and fear. They show, in practical language, how UK savers and investors can beat this system and, crucially, make more money for themselves than they do for financial services firms.

Latin American experiments with pension reform began when Chile converted its public pay-as-you-go system to a system of private individual accounts in 1981. In the 1990s, several other countries followed suit, inspired both by Chile's reforms and World Bank recommendations that stressed adopting compulsory government-mandated individual savings accounts. Following the lead of Latin America, individual accounts were subsequently introduced in a number of countries in both Europe and Asia. The World Bank and governments in the region have now begun to seriously re-evaluate these privatisations, with the most dramatic effort to 'reform the reform' coming from Chile, where President Michelle Bachelet backed a comprehensive initiative aimed at making the system more efficient and equitable. This volume is the first to assess pension reforms in this new 'post-privatization' era.
Section 1 of the book begins with a discussion on demographic trends by Nobel laureate Robert W. Fogel and is followed by chapters on system design and their policy implications, including chapters on demographic trends, pension system default options, and an analysis of World Bank's policies and how they have evolved (by three former and current World Bank experts). This section concludes with two chapters with differing views on reform and the role of gender (an important and understudied topic). Section 2 contains in-depth chapters on major reform efforts in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay and Argentina.
In addressing the most pressing policy issues and highlighting a broad range of country experiences, this volume provides an unparalleled account of the lessons frompension reform in the Americas.

Economic Restructuring and Social Exclusion provides a timely reminder of persisting inequalities of class, race and gender as a consequence of the changes which have engulfed Europe in less than a decade. The contributors consider key debates including democracy, social justice and citizenship. The book also examines evidence that social and economic polarization is increasing, and the prospect of a conspicuous and growing "underclass" in Europe's urban centres is fast becoming a reality. This volume will be particularly valuable for undergraduate and postgraduate students in sociology.

Perhaps the greatest long-term challenge facing modern economies is how to pay for the living expenses and care costs of the elderly. Following policy decisions made in Australia in the 1990s, a substantial part of the pension requirements of the next cohort of retirees will be met from savings accumulated during working years. The effective management of these savings is crucial. If they are invested wisely, the assets available to fund pensions and care will grow; if not, available funds may turn out to be insufficient. Unfortunately, there is considerable evidence worldwide that the management of funds attracts rent-seeking behaviour by the financial services industry which erodes much of the potential return. Australia introduced compulsory superannuation contributions for its working population in 1991, leading to a proliferation of funded schemes that are largely run by the private sector. Complexity, and many degrees of separation between fund members and those who manage their funds, have emerged as serious problems. Combined with weak competitive pressures and governance systems, and insufficient legal and regulatory constraints, the result is a system that does not serve its members well. This book provides a detailed evaluation of the Australian experience, highlights the extent to which the financial services industry has extracted rents from Australian pensioners, and how and why this occurred. Based on original empirical research, and examination of industry reviews and relevant literature, the book demonstrates the numerous principal-agent, conflict of interest and rent extraction problems that have emerged in Australia. The book makes suggestions for how these problems can be addressed in Australia, and also provides lessons for other countries wishing to enact pension reform.

Pension fund benefits are crucial for pensioners' welfare and pension fund savings have accumulated to huge amounts, covering a major part of world-wide institutional investments. However, the literature on pension fund economics and finance is rather limited, caused, in part, to limited data availability. This book contributes to this literature and focuses on three important areas. The first is pension fund (in)efficiency, which has a huge impact on final benefits, particularly when annual spoilage accumulates over a lifetime. Scale economies, pension plans complexity and alternative pension saving plans are important issues. The second area is investment behavior and risk-taking. A key question refers to the allocation of investments over high risk/high return and relatively safe assets. Bikker investigates whether pension funds follow the life-cycle hypothesis: more risk and return for pension funds with young participants. Many pension funds are rather limited in size, which may raise the question how financially sophisticated the pension fund decision makers are: rather professionals or closer to unskilled private persons? The third field concerns two regulation issues. How do pension fund respond to shocks such as unexpected investment returns or changes in life expectancy? What are the welfare implications to the beneficiary for different methods of securing pension funding: solvency requirements, a pension guarantee fund, or sponsor support? This groundbreaking book will challenge the way pension fund economics is thought about and practiced.

The ultimate guidebook for navigating the new world of pensions and retirement plans

In the wake of the explosive growth of defined contribution (DC) plans invested with target date strategies, and the understanding of how important these strategies can be in effectively meeting retirement income goals, plan sponsors are seeking more optimal target date approaches. This timely book provides you with in-depth answers from the nation's most qualified and experienced experts to pressing questions about DC plan design.Presents the views of individuals from all across the marketIncludes a broad range of plan sponsors both in the corporate world and in the public/government sectorsOffers views from consultants and advisors from the most respected firms, academics who teach at leading universities, and other innovative leaders

With a broad range of knowledge and insight, "Designing Successful Target Date Strategies in Defined Contribution Plans" helps you understand the evolution of DC plans, pulls together all angles of what it takes to develop custom target date strategies, and provides you with a look ahead to the future.

Pension funds are big business. They are important to employers, employees, governments, and society at large. With the increasing concern over dwindling retirement benefits and the effect on public awareness of recent pension fund crises, managing pension plans has never been more critical--and the pressure on those who are responsible for them has only intensified. Destined to become the classic resource on pension plan management, Managing Pension Plans explains everything you need to know for successful management of any pension plan--from how pension plans help sponsors manage their workforces to the latest in investment and risk management. With concise and practical guidance on ways for achieving optimal finance performance, Managing Pensions Plans is an indispensable resource for pension fund trustees, boards of directors, managers, and administrators of both public and private pension plans as well as for the money management firms, consultants, actuaries, and accountants who serve the pension fund industry. Logue and Rader, two of the world's leading experts on the subject, explain all the financial, legal, economic, accounting, and managerial issues that those who make pension fund decisions must juggle--in language that non-financial managers can understand, yet with sufficient depth to be useful to financial managers as well. The authors synthesize the latest in capital market and financial economics research to help those involved in pension management improve their decision-making in all the critical areas, including: choosing the optimal form of pension plan, formulating and implementing the plan's investment strategy, selecting and monitoring pension plan managers, measuring the plan's performance, and managing financial risk. In addition, the book describes in detail the responsibilities of fiduciaries, revealing how to be both a prudent fiduciary and a capable decision maker. Additionally, Managing Pension Plans offers candid advice on how pension managers can improve fund performance by being more effective shareholders. As pension fund management and performance increasingly affect the success of organizations as a whole, this book will be indispensable to anyone--from fund analysts to board members--who influences pension fund decisions.

In the 1990s, numerous Latin American nations privatized their public pension systems. These reforms dramatically transformed the way these countries provide retirement income, and they provoked widespread protests from workers and pensioners alike. Retiring the State represents the first book-length study of the origins of this surprising trend. Drawing on original field research, including interviews with key policymakers, Madrid argues that the recent reforms were driven not by social policy, but by macroeconomic concerns. Countries facing growing financial pressures chose to privatize their pension systems largely to boost their domestic savings rates and reduce public pension spending in the long run. The author explores his arguments through detailed case studies of pension reform in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, a survey of social security privatization efforts in East Europe and Latin America as a whole, and a quantitative analysis of pension privatization worldwide.

First published in 1992, this book explains how pension funds work in order to highlight their impact on the economy as a whole. David Blake explores the different systems in operation at the time of writing, both state run and private sector, and describes policy initiatives such as personal pension schemes. Longer life-expectancy, overseas investment, equal opportunities and short-termism in capital markets are among the issues discussed as David Blake assesses how pension funds typically behave. This is a title of continued relevance, which addresses the questions repeatedly raised within government and wider society.

This volume develops an original critique of the belief that the present era of finance, where finance markets dominate contemporary capitalist economies, represents the best possible way of organising economic affairs. In fact, it is argued, the ensuing economic instability and inefficiency create the preconditions for the end of the dominance of finance. The End of Finance develops a theory of capital market inflation rooted in the work of Veblen, Kalecki, Keynes and Minsky, demonstrating how it disinclines productive activity on the part of firms, provides only short-term conditions that are propitious for privatisation and distorts monetary policy in the long-term. The author examines the role of pension fund schemes and financial derivatives in transmitting capital market inflation and provides a nuanced analysis of the contradictory role they play in the financial system. Capital market inflation is also examined in its historical context and compared with past inflations, in particular the South Sea and Mississippi Bubbles, which spawned the first financial derivatives, and the first privatisations. This broad historical vision allows us to see these forms of inflation as temporary and provisional in character.

This book focuses on relatively unexplored areas in pension and health care arrangements, including financing, in East Asia. The book aims to fill the literature gap on social protection in East Asia by covering issues such as pension and health care arrangements in the depopulating high income countries of Japan and Korea; the challenges of the pay-out phase in Defined Contribution (DC) arrangements in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore; and the extension of coverage of social protection schemes in China, India, and Indonesia. It also reviews social protection from a much wider perspective and extends coverage of social protection in terms of both the proportion of the population with access to the social protection scheme and the types of risks faced by the households and by society as a whole. The book also gives attention to reforms of civil service pensions.

First published in 1992, this title conducts an in-depth examination of the investment behaviour of pension funds, presenting the first econometric model in this area. Using the well-established framework of modern portfolio theory, David Blake derives a model of optimal portfolio behaviour that explains pension fund asset holdings in terms of the most important macroeconomic and cyclical indicators. He shows how factors such as industry profitability, the balance of payments and the monetary and fiscal policies of the government influence pension fund investments. Broad in scope, this reissue will be of particular value to students and academics with an interest in econometrics, investment analysis and the pension fund industry.

This book traces and analyzes the legislation and implementation of pension reforms in four Central, Eastern and Southeastern European countries: Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. By comparing the political economy of their policymaking processes, it seeks to pinpoint regularities between institutional settings, actor constellations, decision-making strategies and reform. Guardiancich employs a historical institutionalist framework to analyze the policies, actors and institutions that characterized the period between the collapse of socialism and the global financial crisis of 2008-2011. He argues that viable pension reforms should not be seen simply as an event, but rather as a continuing process that must be fiscally, socially and politically sustainable. In particular, the primary goal of a pension scheme is to reduce poverty, provide adequate retirement income and insure against the risks of old age within given fiscal constraints, and this will happen only if the scheme enjoys continuing political support at all levels. To this end the author individuates those institutional characteristics of countries that increase the consistency of reforms and lower the likelihood of policy reversals in time. Pension Reforms in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, political economy, social policy and economics.

"Global Portfolio Diversification" synthesizes principal debates between analysts and academics. Covering subjects such as risk management, diversification and hedging strategies, deviations from market efficiency, and exchange rates, the book includes case studies, research, and commentary by the editors. Essayists include two past presidents of the American Finance Association and the current editors of the Journal of Finance and Economic Inquiry, as well as senior market regulators, financial managers, and representatives of international securities exchanges. It includes features that: deal with increased interest in the globalization of financial markets; cover managing and hedging risks; analyze microstructures and analyses; and show how to implement portfolio diversification. It is prepared by an international team of leading financial academics and portfolio managers.

While the immediate dangers from the recent financial crisis have abated --much of the financial system has returned to profitability and the economy is growing, albeit slowly --the damage to the economy will linger for years. Among the many impacts is the problem that may be most acute in the United States: how state and local governments and private companies will honor their obligations under defined benefit (DB) pension plans. Institutional investors also confront new difficulties in the low-interest-rate environment that has prevailed since the onset of the crisis. East Asian economies, namely in Japan, Korea, and China, also face pension issues as their populations age.

In "Growing Old," experts from academia and the private sector consider the hard questions regarding the future of pension plans and institutional money management, both in the United States and in Asia. This volume is the latest collaboration between the Brookings Institution and the Nomura Institute of Capital Markets Research on issues confronting the financial sector of common interest to audiences in the United States and Japan.

Contributors: Olivia S. Mitchell (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania), Akiko Nomura (Nomura Institute of Capital Markets Research), Robert Novy-Marx (Simon Graduate School of Business, University of Rochester), Betsy Palmer (MFS Investment Management), Robert Pozen (Harvard Business School), Joshua Rauh (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University), Natalie Shapiro (MFS Investment Management)

First published in 1992, this book explains how pension funds work in order to highlight their impact on the economy as a whole. David Blake explores the different systems in operation at the time of writing, both state run and private sector, and describes policy initiatives such as personal pension schemes. Longer life-expectancy, overseas investment, equal opportunities and short-termism in capital markets are among the issues discussed as David Blake assesses how pension funds typically behave. This is a title of continued relevance, which addresses the questions repeatedly raised within government and wider society.

First published in 1992, this title conducts an in-depth examination of the investment behaviour of pension funds, presenting the first econometric model in this area. Using the well-established framework of modern portfolio theory, David Blake derives a model of optimal portfolio behaviour that explains pension fund asset holdings in terms of the most important macroeconomic and cyclical indicators. He shows how factors such as industry profitability, the balance of payments and the monetary and fiscal policies of the government influence pension fund investments. Broad in scope, this reissue will be of particular value to students and academics with an interest in econometrics, investment analysis and the pension fund industry.