February 2024
22Feb

The Government Pension Identity Crisis

By T. Leigh Anenson, J.D., LL.M., Ph.D. & Hannah R. Weiser, J.D., M.B.A. The Contract Clause once dominated the docket of the Supreme Court. But now the clause belongs to the museum of constitutional law. This artifact, however, is gaining new life in ongoing litigation over public pension reform that significantly impacts the financial benefits of government workers such as teachers, firefighters, and even judges. And, unlike private sector workers, for public servants there is no federal safety net in...

February 22, 2024
Articles, Pension design, , , ,
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22Feb

Can ChatGPT Plan Your Retirement?: Generative AI and Financial Advice

By Andrew W. Lo & Jillian Ross We identify some of the most pressing issues facing the adoption of large language models (LLMs) in practical settings, and propose a research agenda to reach the next technological inflection point in generative AI. We focus on four challenges facing most LLM applications: domain-specific expertise, an ability to tailor that expertise to a user’s unique situation, trustworthiness and adherence to the user’s moral and ethical standards, and conformity to regulatory guidelines and...

February 22, 2024
Articles, Operation, Pension design, , ,
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21Feb

Social Spending in Mexico: Needs, Priorities and Reforms

By Swarnali A Hannan, Juan Pablo Cuesta Aguirre & David Bartolini Poverty in Mexico was high before the COVID-19 pandemic and has been exacerbated by the pandemic, with significant variation across states. Education losses from the pandemic are likely to be large and worsen pre-existing disparities; unless mitigated soon, they could contribute to heightened scarring over the medium term. Using state-level and cross-country comparisons, this paper reviews key social programs as well as priorities in education and health. It finds that...

February 21, 2024
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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16Feb

Does Pension Automatic Enrollment Increase Debt? Evidence from a Large-Scale Natural Experiment

By John Beshears, Matthew Blakstad, James J. Choi, Christopher Firth, John Gathergood, David Laibson, Richard Notley, Jesal D. Sheth, Will Sandbrook & Neil Stewart Does automatic enrollment into retirement saving increase household debt? We study the randomized roll-out of automatic enrollment pensions to ~160,000 employers in the United Kingdom with 2-29 employees. We find that the additional savings generated through automatic enrollment are partially offset by increases in unsecured debt. Over the first 41 months after enrollment, each additional month...

February 16, 2024
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16Feb

Trends in State and Local Pension Funds

By Oliver Giesecke & Joshua Rauh Unfunded public pension obligations represent the largest liability for state and local governments in the United States. As of fiscal year 2021, the total reported unfunded liabilities of these plans are $1.076 trillion. In contrast, the market value of the unfunded liability is approximately $6.501 trillion. As a result, the reported funding ratio of 82.5% falls to 43.8% under a market-based valuation. The market values reflect the fact that accrued pension promises are a...

February 16, 2024
Articles, Pension Management, , ,
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16Feb

Gender Inequality Over the Life Cycle, Information Provision and Policy Preferences

By Alessandra Casarico, Jana Schuetz & Silke Uebelmesser We conduct a survey experiment with four thousand German respondents and provide information on two measures of gender inequality, separately or jointly: the gender gap in earnings and the gender gap in pensions. We analyze the effect of information provision on respondents’ views on the importance of reducing gender inequality and on their agreement with the adoption of policies targeted at different stages of the life cycle and aimed at reducing the...

February 16, 2024
Articles, Pension design, , , , ,
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12Feb

The Role of AI to Enhance Retirement Savings: The Gender Gap Challenge

By Anabel Martínez Colín AI is the biggest disruptor in the financial sector, where there are many AI solutions at work, and the role of AI over it is well documented. However, the deployment of AI in the pension segment is still at an exploratory stage, and its influence on the gender gap in pensions is still unclear. This research explores the relationship between AI readiness and the gender gap in pensions (GGP), which may also be statistically significant. In addition,...

February 12, 2024
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02Feb

Redistributive effects of pension reforms: who are the winners and losers?

By Miguel Sánchez-Romero, Philip Schuster & Alexia Prskawetz As the heterogeneity in life expectancy by socioeconomic status increases, many pension systems imply a wealth transfer from short- to long-lived individuals. Various pension reforms aim to reduce inequalities that are caused by ex-ante differences in life expectancy. However, these pension reforms may induce redistribution effects. We introduce a dynamic general equilibrium-overlapping generations model with heterogeneous individuals that differ in their education, labor supply, lifetime income, and life expectancy. Within this framework we...

February 2, 2024
Articles, System Sustainability, ,
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02Feb

Home Equity and Retirement Funding: Challenges and Opportunities

By Vishaal Baulkaran & Pawan Jain We investigate the use of home equity to address the retirement saving crisis and funding shortfall. Using survey data from consumers and financial planners, we examine Canadian consumers’ views on equity release and gauge financial planners’ knowledge, attitudes, and perspectives toward recommending equity release products to their clients. Our findings indicate that a primary barrier for consumers is their lack of understanding about home equity release schemes. However, when these schemes are more cost-effective...

February 2, 2024
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02Feb

Climate Polarization and Green Investment

By Anders Anderson & David T. Robinson We build a nationally representative sample of retirement savers in Sweden to study how asymmetric updating of beliefs about climate change affects investment decisions. After the intense heat wave of 2018, respondents in regions dominated by a right-wing, anti-climate party grow less concerned about climate change, while respondents outside these regions grow more concerned. Those growing more concerned rebalance their retirement portfolios toward climate-friendly mutual funds; those growing less concerned rebalance out of...

February 2, 2024
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