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On the Investment Strategies in Occupational Pension Plans

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  • Frank Bosserhoff
  • An Chen
  • Nils Sorensen
  • Mitja Stadje

Abstract

Demographic changes increase the necessity to base the pension system more and more on the second and the third pillar, namely the occupational and private pension plans; this paper deals with Target Date Funds (TDFs), which are a typical investment opportunity for occupational pension planners. TDFs are usually identified with a decreasing fraction of wealth invested in equity (a so-called glide path) as retirement comes closer, i.e., wealth is invested more risky the younger the saver is. We investigate whether this is actually optimal in the presence of non-tradable income risk in a stochastic volatility environment. The retirement planning procedure is formulated as a stochastic optimization problem. We find it is the (random) contributions that induce the optimal path exhibiting a glide path structure, both in the constant and stochastic volatility environment. Moreover, the initial wealth and the initial contribution made to a retirement account strongly influence the fractional amount of wealth to be invested in risky assets. The risk aversion of an individual mainly determines the steepness of the glide path.

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  • Frank Bosserhoff & An Chen & Nils Sorensen & Mitja Stadje, 2021. "On the Investment Strategies in Occupational Pension Plans," Papers 2104.08956, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2104.08956
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