Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Ann Huff Stevens
Author-Name-First: Ann Huff
Author-Name-Last: Stevens
Author-Name: Sewin Chan
Author-Name-First: Sewin
Author-Name-Last: Chan
Author-Workplace-Name: Department of Economics, University of California Davis
Title: What You Don?t Know Can?t Help You: Pension Knowledge and Retirement Decision Making
Abstract: This paper provides an answer to an important empirical puzzle in the retirementliterature: while most people know little about their own pension plans, retirement behavior isstrongly affected by pension incentives. We combine administrative and self-reported pensiondata to measure the retirement response to actual and perceived financial incentives. Whilevirtually all recent empirical work has relied on administrative- or employer-reported data, wedocument an important role for self-reported pension data in determining retirement behavior.Well-informed individuals are five times more responsive to pension incentives than the average.In contrast, ill-informed individuals respond to their own misperceptions of the incentives ratherthan being unresponsive to any measured incentives.
Length: 37
File-URL: https://repec.dss.ucdavis.edu/files/aCkmHZ2WyZ3p6W2ahFLF7vdh/05-18.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
Number: 20
Classification-JEL: J26, H55
KeyWords: pension plans, retirement behavior
Creation-Date: 20050930
Handle: RePEc:cda:wpaper:20