ABSTRACT: To put the plight of the Detroit city employees into an international and comparative context when it comes to considering how their pension and wage claims should be treated in bankruptcy, it is instructive to consider how similar employee pension and wage claims would be treated in corporate insolvencies in other countries.
Detroit’s bankruptcy case has shaken up the bond market. The writing is on the wall: Detroit will probably succeed in reducing its pension obligations. In hopes of restructuring its debt, Detroit filed a bankruptcy case under Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code. Chapter 9 follows the familiar path of Chapter 11 in many ways, but Detroit will face several unique challenges as it attempts to apply some of the Bankruptcy Code’s hallmark provisions.
ABSTRACT: From January 2006 to September 2012, defined benefit (DB) plans outperformed defined contribution (DC) plans by nearly one percentage point. Over time, this type of differential can mean the difference between participants having a comfortable versus challenging retirement.
Why and how do Americans manage post-retirement risks? To help answer this question, this article draws
heavily on Society of Actuaries research, as well as additional research done on retirement plan selection and
lifetime income options.
ABSTRACT: Choice Blindness is an experimental paradigm that examines the interplay between individuals’ preferences, decisions, and expectations by manipulating the relationship between intention and choice. This paper expands upon the existing Choice Blindness framework by investigating the presence of the effect in an economically significant decision context, specifically that of pension choice.
ABSTRACT: Throughout the retirement process, individuals are in a continuous state of making decisions. From deciding when to start deferring money to a 401(k) plan, to figuring out how retirement money should be invested and when to rebalance, to choosing which date to commence Social Security benefits, we are always making choices.
ABSTRACT: A revolution in the retirement landscape over the last several decades shifted the predominant savings vehicle from traditional pensions (defined benefit plans) to self-directed accounts in defined contribution plans like the 401(k) and has drastically changed how people invest in the stock market and why.
ABSTRACT: When Stockton, California, a city of just under 300,000 people, filed for Chapter 9 protection on June 28, 2012, 1 it became the largest U.S. city by population to do so. 2 Like other municipalities, Stockton has been greatly affected by the collapse of the sub-prime lending market from 2007 to 2008. 3 Stockton, however, was disproportionately affected because of its location in the Central Valley region of California, an attractive location for those who want to live near the Bay area, with one out of every thirty homes in foreclosure.