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  • 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.... View Details
Keywords: Retirement Savings; Automatic Enrollment; Choice Architecture; Nudge; Financial Distress; Retirement; Saving; Borrowing and Debt; Behavior
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  • January 2025
  • Article

Automatic Enrollment with a 12% Default Contribution Rate

By: John Beshears, Ruofei Guo, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and James J. Choi
We study a retirement savings plan with a default contribution rate of 12% of income, which is much higher than previously studied defaults. Twenty-five percent of employees had not opted out of this default 12 months after hire; a literature review finds that the... View Details
Keywords: Retirement Savings; Defined Contribution Retirement Plan; Automatic Enrollment; Retirement; Saving; Income; Decision Choices and Conditions
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  • 2010
  • Chapter

The Impact of Employer Matching on Savings Plan Participation under Automatic Enrollment

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
Existing research has documented the large impact that automatic enrollment has on savings plan participation. All the companies examined in these studies, however, have combined automatic enrollment with an employer match. This raises a question about how effective... View Details
Keywords: Motivation and Incentives; Consumer Behavior; Personal Finance; Investment Funds; Microeconomics; Compensation and Benefits
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  • 2024
  • Working Paper

Does Pension Automatic Enrollment Increase Debt? Evidence from a Large-Scale Natural Experiment

By: John Beshears, Matthew Blakstad, James J. Choi, Christopher Firth, John Gathergood, David Laibson, Richard Notley, Jesal D. Sheth, Will Sandbrook and Neil Stewart
Does automatic enrollment into retirement saving increase household debt? We study the randomized roll-out of automatic enrollment pensions to ~160,000 employers in the United Kingdom with 2-29 employees. We find that the additional savings generated through automatic... View Details
Keywords: Retirement; Saving; Personal Finance; Borrowing and Debt; Credit; Compensation and Benefits
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  • 2024
  • Working Paper

Automating Short-Term Payroll Savings: Evidence from Two Large U.K. Experiments

By: Sarah Holmes Berk, James J. Choi, Jay Garg, John Beshears and David Laibson
Automatic enrollment is often used to increase retirement savings. What are the effects of using it (or, alternatively, requiring an active enrollment choice) to increase short-term savings? We evaluate two experiments in the U.K. at employers that enable workers to... View Details
Keywords: Retirement Savings; Participation; Automatic Enrollment; Retirement; Human Resources
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  • 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 401(k) plans incorporates the facts that employees frequently leave firms (often before matching contributions... View Details
Keywords: Personal Finance; Saving; Retirement; Behavioral Finance; Compensation and Benefits
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  • 21 Feb 2014
  • News

Why myRa is not the way to save for retirement

  • Article

The Effect of Providing Peer Information on Retirement Savings Decisions

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian and Katherine L. Milkman
Using a field experiment in a 401(k) plan, we measure the effect of disseminating information about peer behavior on savings. Low-saving employees received simplified plan enrollment or contribution increase forms. A randomized subset of forms stated the fraction of... View Details
Keywords: Saving; Decision Choices and Conditions; Retirement
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  • 2020
  • Chapter

Building Emergency Savings Through Employer-Sponsored Rainy-Day Savings Accounts

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, J. Mark Iwry, David C. John, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
Roughly half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. When financial shocks occur during their working life, many of these households tap into their retirement savings accounts. We explore the practical considerations and challenges associated with helping households... View Details
Keywords: Savings; Household; Saving
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  • 2019
  • Working Paper

Biometric Monitoring, Service Delivery and Misreporting: Evidence from Healthcare in India

By: Thomas Bossuroy, Clara Delavallade and Vincent Pons
Developing countries increasingly use biometric identification technology in hopes of improving the reliability of administrative information and delivering social services more efficiently. This paper exploits the random placement of biometric tracking devices in... View Details
Keywords: Biometric Technology; Health Care and Treatment; Technological Innovation; Analytics and Data Science; Quality; Performance Improvement; India
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  • Web

Help - Alumni

listed. A donor may request that he or she be recognized for payments as they are made over more than one fiscal year. Will my gift to HBS be automatically credited to my class? Yes, all gifts receive class credit. Will my spouse and I... View Details
  • Web

Frequently Asked Questions | HBS Online

available for HBS Online participants who have enrolled in at least 1 prior qualifying HBS Online program. Restrictions apply. Please review the Program Policies page for more discount details. Discounts are View Details
  • 12 Oct 2017
  • News

Fighting Poverty One Neighborhood at a Time

multigenerational cycles of poverty. “You can’t expect schools to consistently outperform the health of their neighborhoods,” says Majors, a vice president at Purpose Built Communities, an Atlanta-based, nonprofit consulting group. “The reality is that some employers... View Details
Keywords: Deborah Blagg
  • 03 May 2010
  • Research & Ideas

What Is the Future of MBA Education?

Business schools are positioned on increasingly unsteady—and unpopular—ground. MBA enrollments fluctuate or decline; recruiters voice skepticism about the value of newly-minted MBA degrees; and deans, faculty, students, executives, and a... View Details
Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Education
  • Web

Cross-Registration | MBA

. Please note that faculty approvals may automatically appear on your online petition; this does not indicate that you are enrolled in the course. Tufts Fletcher Students Visit my.Harvard and click... View Details
  • 24 Jul 2019
  • Lessons from the Classroom

Can These Business Students Motivate Londoners to Do the Right Thing?

much. In this interpretation, it shouldn’t really matter whether the default is for employees to be automatically enrolled or not; in both cases, employees would think about their options and make a wise... View Details
Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman
  • 06 Nov 2017
  • Blog Post

Meet the HBS Women’s Association

The mission of the WSA is to connect, empower, and celebrate the next generation of women leaders and we do so by engaging the HBS community in the continued pursuit of gender equality in the workplace and beyond. WSA membership is free and all women at HBS are View Details
  • Web

1.9 Course Registration | MBA

1.9 Course Registration 1.0 Academic Information & Policies Course scheduling is managed through the Registrar’s Office. Required Curriculum Academic courses in the first year of the MBA Program are prescribed by the faculty. A student is registered for RC courses... View Details
  • Web

Program Policies - HBS Online

enrolling in Business Analytics, Economics for Managers, or Financial Accounting as individual certificate programs, participants will be ineligible to enroll in CORe. Credential of Leadership, Impact, and... View Details
  • Web

Shad Membership Eligibility | About

below. Membership Billing HBS Students are automatically billed for membership on their term bills. Students who do not wish to use the facility can complete the waiver form (login required) , for use and will not be charged on their term... View Details