Pensions as Retirement Income Insurance

Zvi Bodie ()

No 2917, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper develops the view that employer-sponsored pension plans are best understood as retirement income insurance for employees and from that perspective addresses a number of questions regarding the reasons for their existence, their design, and their funding and investment policies. The most important of these questions are: - Why do employers provide pension plans for their employees and why is participation usually mandatory? - Why is the defined benefit form of pension plan the dominant one rather than defined contribution? - Why are the payout options under most plans limited to life annuities? - Why are most plans integrated with Social Security? - Why don't corporate pension plans follow the extreme funding and asset allocation policies that seem to be optimal from the perspective of shareholder wealth maximization? - Why do employers often make ad hoc increases in pension benefits not strictly required under the formula in defined benefit plans? - Why don't private pensions offer inflation insurance?

Date: 1989-04
Note: ME
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published as Journal of Economic Literature, March 1990, Vol. 28, No. 1.

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