Projects (114)

This project investigates the effectiveness of decision aids in pension communication for participants of a pension scheme. Pension Decision Aids (PDAs) are interactive online tools that through a sequence of questions and information guide participants towards making informed pension decisions. PDAs (1) explicitly state the decision that needs to be considered; (2) provide information about the options, associated benefits, risks, probabilities and uncertainties; (3)…

The proposed research focuses on the trading behavior of institutional investors, and pension funds in particular. Kristy Jansen recently started a joint project with Jules van Binsbergen and Ralph Koijen about factor investing. Factor investing plays a central role in performance attribution and performance measurement. However, little is known about the overall exposure of institutional investors to these factors. In this study the goal…

This project will study the strategies that older men and women (aged 60+) use to cope with the new reality of an extended working life. We will study the determinants of the labor force transitions of older workers before and after retirement, and the consequences for their health and wellbeing, and involvement in other socially productive behaviors such as volunteering and caring. The project…

Artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly enters multiple aspects of our lives, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of day-to-day operations (AI100 2016). Specifically pension service providers may profit from this development. Despite huge investments in call center labor and software, providers only manage to resolve about half of customer requests in a satisfactory manner (Upbin 2013). Emotions are critical to successful service interactions in general (Mattila…

The provision of income after retirement is in a state of flux. Traditionally, “one-size fits all” funded pension plans complemented the government schemes. Increasingly, however, the provision of retirement income can be tailored to individual characteristics and preferences. These developments have created a market for pension products such as tax-exempt savings plans and life-cycle investment funds. Such pension products aim to optimally allocate investment…

Life-cycle decisions are in part based on how long people expect to live. Therefore, observable health risks have the potential to affect individual-level decision making. Currently, genetic health information is becoming increasingly available to patients and consumers, but the extent to which genetic information may affect retirement decisions, e.g., savings, insurance coverage, and withdrawals of pension funds, is largely unexplored. We propose a research…

The proportion of senior citizens in the Dutch population is increasing rapidly and will likely reach 25% – about 5 mln people – by 2040 (CBS, 2012). The government stimulates elderly to live independently at home for as long as possible, among other things in order to keep public long-term care financially sustainable. At the Ministry of Health, this policy includes e.g. monitoring of…

A pressing question about the future organization of the Dutch pension system is whether the level of solidarity among pension funds participants can be maintained. As a result of the mandatory enrollment in the pension funds associated with their employers, the Dutch pension system inherently enforces solidarity in various dimensions (Hoff 2015). For example, through collective risk-sharing, solidarity occurs within a generation of pension…

In our project, we will compare the asset allocation (or portfolio choices) of U.S. 401k pension plans with the different types of Dutch retirement systems. We focus on U.S. 401k pension plans because the Dutch retirement system is transitioning from defined benefit (DB) pension system towards defined contribution (DC) retirement system. Bovenberg and Nijman (2017) discuss the proposed reforms of the Dutch system that…

The central aim of this project is to compare national regulation of sustainable investment by pension funds. Survey research shows that considerable national differences in sustainable investment (SI) by pension funds continue to exist in Europe and it identifies regulation as one of the drivers for SI (Eurosif 2016). For this reason, it is relevant to explore if and how national regulations impose constraints…