The recent financial crisis and historical record suggest important lessons about the design of national pension systems. First, wide fluctuation in asset returns makes it hard for well-informed savers to select a saving rate or a sensible investment strategy for DC pensions. Workers who follow identical investment strategies but who retire a few years apart can receive DC pensions that are startlingly unequal. Second, it is hard for ordinary workers, as opposed to optimal planners, to make sensible choices about portfolio allocation. Their investment errors mean that actual returns fall short of the theoretical returns that could be earned by a well-informed, disciplined investor.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 2735.
Length: Date of creation: 2009 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_2735
Contact details of provider: Postal: Poschingerstrasse 5, 81679 Munich Phone: +49 (89) 9224-0 Fax: +49 (89) 985369 Web page: http://www.cesifo.de
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Julio Saavedra).
Related research
Keywords:
Other versions of this item:
Find related papers by JEL classification: G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Private Pensions J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Canner, Niko & Mankiw, N Gregory & Weil, David N, 1997.
"An Asset Allocation Puzzle,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 87(1), pages 181-91, March.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Niko Canner & N. Gregory Mankiw & David N. Weil, 1994.
"An Asset Allocation Puzzle,"
NBER Working Papers
4857, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.
Did you know? You can create a compilation of all publications of a group of people, say alumni of a program, your students or memers of an association.