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- All HBS Web (191)
- Faculty Publications (43)
Show Results For
- All HBS Web (191)
- Faculty Publications (43)
- February 2022
- Article
Borrowing to Save? The Impact of Automatic Enrollment on Debt
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and William L. Skimmyhorn
Does automatic enrollment into a retirement plan increase financial distress due to increased borrowing outside the plan? We study a natural experiment created when the U.S. Army began automatically enrolling newly hired civilian employees into the Thrift Savings Plan....
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Keywords:
Retirement Savings;
Automatic Enrollment;
Choice Architecture;
Nudge;
Financial Distress;
Retirement;
Saving;
Borrowing and Debt;
Behavior
Beshears, John, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, and William L. Skimmyhorn. "Borrowing to Save? The Impact of Automatic Enrollment on Debt." Journal of Finance 77, no. 1 (February 2022): 403–447.
- 2018
- Chapter
Work and Workplace
By: Kai Ruggeri, Jana Berkessel, Jascha Achterberg, Gerhard M. Prinz, Alessandra Luna-Navarro, Jon M. Jachimowicz and A. V. Whillans
Work is a major part of many lives. While individual experiences with work will differ—from how long we work to what jobs we have and to what extent we enjoy them—almost everyone is affected by employment, whether they have a job or not. Decades of research in the...
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Keywords:
Workplace;
Behavioral Insights;
Retirement Savings;
Working Conditions;
Employees;
Performance;
Happiness;
Health;
Job Search;
Change
Ruggeri, Kai, Jana Berkessel, Jascha Achterberg, Gerhard M. Prinz, Alessandra Luna-Navarro, Jon M. Jachimowicz, and A. V. Whillans. "Work and Workplace." Chap. 9 in Behavioral Insights for Public Policy: Concepts and Cases, edited by Kai Ruggeri, 156–173. New York: Routledge, 2018.
- 05 Jul 2006
- Research & Ideas
Reinventing the Dowdy Savings Bond
programs," he says. "The money is there at refund time. We just need to help families try to save some of it." Easy To Buy Other recommendations Tufano offers include marketing the program through volunteer tax preparers;...
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- 09 Feb 2016
- News
How and Why Businesses Should Teach Retirement
- 23 Jun 2008
- Research & Ideas
Innovative Ways to Encourage Personal Savings
Putting together the money for everything from a short-term emergency to retirement is hard enough, a challenge that low- and moderate-income families endure every day. Yet as HBS professor Peter Tufano describes, new and old products...
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- 01 Sep 2020
- News
Saving Grace
major pension providers where his savings were stowed. It was hard to pry even basic information from them, he says. Instead they channeled his calls through financial advisors, who pitched costly services. The more he prodded for...
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Keywords:
Jen McFarland Flint
- 06 Sep 2005
- Research & Ideas
The Best Place for Retirement Funds
particularly for investors with large tax-deferred savings vehicles, the asset location decision has a relatively large impact on retirement wealth. With some allowance for institutional differences between...
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Keywords:
by Ann Cullen
- June 2007 (Revised January 2008)
- Case
The Vanguard Group, Inc. in 2006 and Target Retirement Funds
By: Luis M. Viceira
The Vanguard Group is one of the largest asset managers in the U.S., with over $1 trillion in assets, ninety percent of which are mutual fund assets, and more than 12,000 employees at year-end 2006. Vanguard has built a strong reputation as the manager of reference for...
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Keywords:
Asset Management;
Investment Funds;
Personal Finance;
Brands and Branding;
Retirement;
Trust;
Financial Services Industry;
United States
Viceira, Luis M. "The Vanguard Group, Inc. in 2006 and Target Retirement Funds." Harvard Business School Case 207-129, June 2007. (Revised January 2008.)
- May 14, 2024
- Article
One Way to Help Employees Build Emergency Savings
By: Timothy Flacke and Peter Tufano
Intentional cooperation between two organizations — BlackRock, a major asset management firm, and national non-profit, Commonwealth — created the conditions for the nation’s largest payroll processor, multiple U.S. employers, retirement record keepers, and others to...
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Keywords:
Saving;
Personal Finance;
Income;
Nonprofit Organizations;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Partners and Partnerships
Flacke, Timothy, and Peter Tufano. "One Way to Help Employees Build Emergency Savings." Harvard Business Review (website) (May 14, 2024).
- Article
Present Bias Causes and Then Dissipates Auto-enrollment Savings Effects
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Peter Maxted
Present bias causes procrastination, which leads households to stick with auto-enrollment defaults. However, present bias also engenders overconsumption. Separation from each employer generates a rollover of 401(k) balances to an individual retirement account (IRA)...
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Keywords:
Present Bias;
Procrastination;
Personal Finance;
Decision Making;
Social Psychology;
Retirement
Beshears, John, James J. Choi, David Laibson, and Peter Maxted. "Present Bias Causes and Then Dissipates Auto-enrollment Savings Effects." AEA Papers and Proceedings 112 (May 2022): 136–141.
- 2024
- Working Paper
Smaller than We Thought? The Effect of Automatic Savings Policies
By: James J. Choi, David Laibson, Jordan Cammarota, Richard Lombardo and John Beshears
Medium- and long-run dynamics undermine the effect of automatic enrollment and default savings-rate auto-escalation on retirement savings. Our analysis of nine 401(k) plans incorporates the facts that employees frequently leave firms (often before matching...
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Choi, James J., David Laibson, Jordan Cammarota, Richard Lombardo, and John Beshears. "Smaller than We Thought? The Effect of Automatic Savings Policies." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 32828, August 2024.
- 26 Jul 2016
- News
The Science Behind Why You Don’t Save (And What To Do About It)
- 13 Feb 2017
- News
People Trying to Save Prefer Accounts That Are Hard to Tap
- December 2023
- Article
Save More Today or Tomorrow: The Role of Urgency in Precommitment Design
By: Joseph Reiff, Hengchen Dai, John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman and Shlomo Benartzi
To encourage farsighted behaviors, past research suggests that marketers may be wise to invite consumers to pre-commit to adopt them “later.” However, the authors propose that people will draw different inferences from different types of pre-commitment offers, and that...
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Reiff, Joseph, Hengchen Dai, John Beshears, Katherine L. Milkman, and Shlomo Benartzi. "Save More Today or Tomorrow: The Role of Urgency in Precommitment Design." Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) 60, no. 6 (December 2023): 1095–1113.
- 2022
- Article
How to Choose a Default
By: John Beshears, Richard T. Mason and Shlomo Benartzi
We have developed a model for setting a default when a population is choosing among ordered choices—that is, ones listed in ascending or descending order. A company, for instance, might want to set a default contribution rate that will increase employees’ average...
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Keywords:
Nudge;
Choice Architecture;
Behavioral Economics;
Behavioral Science;
Default;
Savings;
Decision Choices and Conditions;
Behavior;
Motivation and Incentives
Beshears, John, Richard T. Mason, and Shlomo Benartzi. "How to Choose a Default." Behavioral Science & Policy 8, no. 1 (2022): 1–15.
- 2022
- Working Paper
Optimal Illiquidity
By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Clayton, Christopher Harris, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
We calculate the socially optimal level of illiquidity in an economy populated by households with taste shocks and naive present bias. The government chooses mandatory contributions to accounts, each witha different pre-retirement withdrawal penalty. Collected...
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Keywords:
Illiquidity;
Commitment;
Flexibility;
Savings;
Social Security;
Retirement;
Government Legislation;
Taxation;
Saving
Beshears, John, James J. Choi, Christopher Clayton, Christopher Harris, David Laibson, and Brigitte C. Madrian. "Optimal Illiquidity." Working Paper, July 2022.
- 06 Oct 2020
- Working Paper Summaries
Optimal Illiquidity
- 21 Feb 2023
- Research & Ideas
Are Your Employees Passing Up Incentives? Try Promoting the Programs More
retirement savings plan, may be a lack of effective advertising. “All this money and time and smart people thinking about programs is all for naught if we don’t effectively communicate them,” John says. In...
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Keywords:
by Scott Van Voorhis
- 26 Mar 2011
- News
Meet 'Future You.' Like What You See?
- 05 Feb 2015
- Working Paper Summaries