TY  - BOOK
AU  - Bhattacharya,Vivek
AU  - Illanes,Gastón
ED  - National Bureau of Economic Research.
TI  - The Design of Defined Contribution Plans
T2  - NBER working paper series
PY  - 2022///
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - National Bureau of Economic Research
KW  - Bargaining Theory • Matching Theory
KW  - jelc
KW  - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits • Retirement Plans • Private Pensions
KW  - Economics of Regulation
N1  - April 2022; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
N2  - Defined contribution (DC) plans are a major vehicle for retirement savings in the US, holding almost $10 trillion in assets under management. In recent years, the quality and availability of these plans has been the subject of active policy attention and of several major lawsuits. This paper studies how employers and plan providers (recordkeepers) design these plans. We argue that low plan quality and limited provision can come from two sources. First, employer willingness to pay may be misaligned with that of workers or of regulators. Second, the market for recordkeeping may be imperfectly competitive. We propose a model of plan design and estimate that while both frictions are at play, significant changes to plan quality require modifying employer preferences.  Accordingly, we evaluate proposed policies and conclude that only direct quality regulation can lead to significant quality improvements. Recent proposals can increase plan provision but have negligible quality effects
UR  - https://www.nber.org/papers/w29981
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w29981
ER  -