Essays on target date funds as a retirement portfolio choice PDF Download

Author: Helen Saar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Olivia S. Mitchell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : 401(k) plans
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Target date funds in corporate retirement plans grew from $5B in 2000 to $734B in 2018, partly because federal regulation sanctioned these as default investments in automatic enrollment plans. We show that adopters delegated pension investment decisions to fund managers selected by plan sponsors. Including these funds in retirement saving menus raised equity shares, boosted bond exposures, curtailed cash/company stock holdings, and reduced idiosyncratic risk. The adoption of low-cost target date funds may enhance retirement wealth by as much as 50 percent over a 30-year horizon.

Author: Zvi Bodie
Publisher:
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 15

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Many participants in self-directed retirement plans (401k, IRA, etc.) do not know enough about investing to choose rationally among alternatives. Others may know enough, but find it unpleasant or too time-consuming. Target-date funds (TDFs), also known as life-cycle funds, are being offered as a simple solution to their dilemma. A TDF is a quot;fund of fundsquot; diversified across stocks, bonds, and cash with the feature that the proportion invested in stocks is automatically reduced as time passes. Empirical evidence suggests that a simple TDF strategy would be an improvement over the choices currently made by many uninformed plan participants. This paper explores one way to achieve an even greater improvement. Using a compact continuous-time optimization model, we characterize a person for whom a TDF strategy would be optimal: a quot;natural TDF holder.quot; We then show that the TDF strategy may be far from optimal for people who ő although of the same age ő differ from the natural TDF holder in their risk aversion or exposure to human-capital risk. To bring such plan participants much closer to their optimal strategy it is enough to add a second simple investment alternative ő a safe fund matched to their time horizon. Participants with the same time horizon could then choose (or be advised to choose) either the TDF or the safe target-date fund depending on their risk aversion and human-capital risk. We find that people who are very risk averse and who have a high exposure to market risk through their labor income would experience a substantial gain in welfare from being offered a safe target-date fund rather than a risky one. Recent empirical research suggests that human-capital betas change over one's working career. They are typically quite high during the early years when human capital represents the largest part of total wealth for most people, and they decline with age. To reflect gradual changes in human capital risk over the life-cycle from predominantly quot;stock-likequot; to mostly quot;bond-like,quot; TDFs should switch from a quot;linearquot; strategy to a quot;hump-shapedquot; strategy with respect to age.

Author: Julie R. Agnew
Publisher:
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Making portfolio allocation decisions can be difficult for American households who lack interest or experience in financial matters. Service providers and 401(k) plan sponsors have introduced new plan design approaches and investment products, such as target-date funds, that can simplify savings and investment choices for defined contribution (DC) plan participants. Some participants invest in the funds on their own; some are defaulted into the fund by plan sponsors through mechanisms such as automatic enrollment, so it is important to understand how knowledge and awareness may differ between active and passive investment decisions. Also, DC plan participants often invest in other assets within their retirement accounts, a phenomenon known as “mixed” target-date investing. This paper seeks to better understand the determinants of participant portfolio allocations to target-date funds. The authors use focus group discussions and survey evidence linked to 401(k) administrative data. They explore rational motivations for portfolio decisions, psychological elements such as trust, and the relationship between financial knowledge and portfolio choice. The current version of this paper presents a preliminary analysis of the survey data and the authors' focus group findings.

Author: Olivia S. Mitchell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Individual responsibility for portfolio construction is a central theme for defined contribution pensions, yet the rise of target-date funds is shifting investment decisions from works back to employers. A complex choice architecture including automatic enrollment, reenrollment, and fund mapping, is increasing the number of participants defaulting into employer-selected target-date funds. At the same time, portfolios of non-defaulted participants undergo sizeable changes, with equity share ratios widening by over 40 percent points between younger/older partricipants. Among active decsion-makers, these funds act as a form of implicit employer-provided lifecycle investment advice. More broadly, our findings hightlight malleable preferences among retirement investors and ad emand for default-based guidance or simplified advice for households facing complex choices.

Author: Youngkyun Park
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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This dissertation studies underfunding in defined benefit (DB) pension plans and firms' contribution behavior, 401(k) plan participant investments in lifecycle funds under plan sponsors' initiative, and fund commonalities within mutual fund families. Responding to the recent decline in DB pension funding, firms have increased pension contributions to their underfunded plans. In the first essay I empirically examine firms' contribution behavior to underfunded DB plans and funding choice for pension contributions. I find that firms reveal different sensitivities of pension contributions to underfunding across aggregate funding levels. Furthermore, at a lower funding level firms have the greater sensitivity of pension contributions to underfunding and significantly utilize the tax deductibility of pension contributions. As for a funding choice to fund pension deficits, firms use debt financing at a low funding level, but utilize internal funding by decreasing capital expenditures at a lower funding level. Firms that use the debt financing are likely to have investment-grade credit ratings or high debt leverage, while firms that use the internal funding are likely to be high-levered ones. Recently lifecycle funds have rapidly grown in self-directed retirement plans. Despite the increasing popularity among plan sponsors and participants, there are few empirical studies on lifecycle funds. In the second essay, I examine the recent lifecycle fund adoption behavior of 401(k) plan participants from 2004 to 2006. I find that the likelihood of participants changing an investment strategy to adopt lifecycle funds is not significantly affected by participant demographic characteristics, but by participant account and plan design features. This study extends our understanding of 401(k) plan participants' investment behavior by finding (1) that the substitution of lifecycle funds for balanced funds, as well as the designation of lifecycle funds as a plan default, strongly affect participants' investments in lifecycle funds and (2) that balanced fund holdings of participants are negatively associated with their lifecycle fund investments. Mutual funds account for a significant portion of household financial assets and retirement assets. An understanding of characteristics of mutual funds is crucial to fund investors--especially those whose retirement nest eggs are in mutual funds. In the final essay, I examine the impacts of fund commonalities within mutual fund families on fund characteristics in terms of return residual correlations and fund operating expenses. As fund commonalities within a fund family, I focus on common stock holdings and common management of funds. I find that common stock holdings and an existence of a common manager of funds are positively related to return residual correlations, but negatively related to fund operating expenses. This finding suggests that when investors select low-cost equity funds within a family, they should be aware that there exists an investment risk that the fund commonalities that lower fund operating expenses may additionally increase return correlations of the funds.

Author: Karl Erlandzon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Portfolio management
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Author: Ratih Hurriyati
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000328384
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1168

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The GCBME Book Series aims to promote the quality and methodical reach of the Global Conference on Business Management & Entrepreneurship, which is intended as a high-quality scientific contribution to the science of business management and entrepreneurship. The Contributions are expected to be the main reference articles on the topic of each book and have been subject to a strict peer review process conducted by experts in the fields. The conference provided opportunities for the delegates to exchange new ideas and implementation of experiences, to establish business or research connections and to find Global Partners for future collaboration. The conference and resulting volume in the book series is expected to be held and appear annually. The year 2019 theme of book and conference is "Transforming Sustainable Business In The Era Of Society 5.0". The ultimate goal of GCBME is to provide a medium forum for educators, researchers, scholars, managers, graduate students and professional business persons from the diverse cultural backgrounds, to present and discuss their research, knowledge and innovation within the fields of business, management and entrepreneurship. The GCBME conferences cover major thematic groups, yet opens to other relevant topics: Organizational Behavior, Innovation, Marketing Management, Financial Management and Accounting, Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship and Green Business.

Author: Xiao Liu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Using a large sample of individuals who hold Target Retirement Funds (TRFs), we examine how people use mental arithmetic in estimating their retirement age. We find a strong “zero” bias, in that investors have a strong preference for TRFs that end with zero (2030, 2040) as compared to TRFs that end with five (2035, 2045). We find two explanations that account for the bias. First, round ending years are likely considered as landmarks for the transition between working and retirement. Second, people use rounding up and down in the mental arithmetic required to estimate the likely retirement year. This bias manifests itself in people born in years ending between eight and two (e.g., 1968-1972). Those born in zero through two-ending years select TRFs that imply they intend to retire at 70, whereas those born in eight- and nine-ending years choose TRFs that are consistent with the goal of retiring at 60. The bias is particularly costly for those born in years ending between zero and two, as it significantly lowers their wealth by decreasing the amount they contribute towards retirement and exposes them to risk incompatible with their age profile. We find that those exhibiting the bias are also associated with other behaviors detrimental to financial well-being.

Author: Craig Copeland
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Target-date funds (also called quot;life-cycle fundsquot;) are a type of mutual fund that automatically rebalances its asset allocation following a predetermined pattern over time. They typically rebalance to more conservative and income-producing assets as the participant's target date of retirement approaches. Of the 401(k) plan participants in the EBRI/ICI 401(k) database who were found to be in plans that offered target-date funds, 37 percent had at least some fraction of their account in target-date funds in 2007. Target-date funds held about 7 percent of total assets in 401(k) plans and the use of these funds is expected to increase in the future. The Pension Protection Act of 2006 made it easier for plan sponsors to automatically enroll new workers in a 401(k) plan, and target-date funds were one of the types of approved funds specified for a quot;defaultquot; investment if the participant does not elect a choice.This paper investigates the percentage of participants investing in target-date funds in 2007 across various demographic characteristics. Furthermore, it determines whether the entire account balance is allocated to target-date funds for those who invest in them. To control for the potential differences that are likely to result from those defaulted into the funds by automatic enrollment versus those actively choosing the funds, those who can be proxied as being auto-enrolled are compared with those who are not proxied as being auto-enrolled. Moreover, equity allocations outside of the target-date funds are studied both at the aggregate level of the target-date year and at the individual target-date fund level. Overall asset allocation to equities is also investigated, by comparing the equity for those who did not use target dates, those who have only some of their assets in target-date funds, and those who have all of their assets in target-date funds.