IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v32y2019i1p300-337..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Heterogeneity in Target Date Funds: Strategic Risk-taking or Risk Matching?

Author

Listed:
  • Pierluigi Balduzzi
  • Jonathan Reuter

Abstract

The use of target date funds (TDFs) as default options in 401(k) plans increased sharply following the Pension Protection Act of 2006. We document large differences in the realized returns and ex ante risk profiles of TDFs with similar target retirement dates. Analyzing fund-level data, we find evidence that this heterogeneity reflects strategic risk-taking by families with low market share, especially those entering the TDF market after 2006. Analyzing plan-level data, we find little evidence that 401(k) plan sponsors consider, to any economically meaningful degree, the risk profiles of their firms when choosing among TDFs. Received June 13, 2013; editorial decision March 20, 2018 by Editor Laura Starks. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Suggested Citation

  • Pierluigi Balduzzi & Jonathan Reuter, 2019. "Heterogeneity in Target Date Funds: Strategic Risk-taking or Risk Matching?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(1), pages 300-337.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:32:y:2019:i:1:p:300-337.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhy054
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    2. Mao, Mike Qinghao & Wong, Ching Hin, 2022. "Managerial commitment and heterogeneity in target-date funds," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 1-19.
    3. Chalmers, John & Reuter, Jonathan, 2020. "Is conflicted investment advice better than no advice?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 366-387.
    4. Mitchell, Olivia S. & Utkus, Stephen P., 2022. "Target-date funds and portfolio choice in 401(k) plans," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(4), pages 519-536, October.
    5. Mao, Mike Qinghao & Wong, Ching Hin, 2022. "Why have target-date funds performed better in the COVID-19 selloff than the 2008 selloff?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    6. David Blanchett & Michael S. Finke & Jonathan Reuter, 2020. "Portfolio Delegation and 401(k) Plan Participant Responses to COVID-19," NBER Working Papers 27438, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Xin Li & Qiong Xu & Fei Guo & Hecheng Wang, 2023. "State‐owned equity participation and private sector enterprises' strategic risk taking: Evidence from China," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(2), pages 1107-1124, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:32:y:2019:i:1:p:300-337.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.