Publications

Publications

Filter Results: (18) Arrow Down

Show Results For

Page 1 of 18 Results
Sort by

Are you looking for?

→Search All HBS Web
  • 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
Related
  • 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
Related
  • 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
Related
  • 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
Related
  • 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
Related
  • 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
Related
  • 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
Related
  • 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
Related
  • 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
Related
  • 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
  • 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
  • 12 Feb 2007
  • Lessons from the Classroom

‘UpTick’ Brings Wall Street Pressure to Students

stress frequently, but it's a hard thing to teach in a classroom. Each year, thousands of business school students enroll in courses on finance. Their sights set on a career in money management, they dutifully study theories such as the... View Details
Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Financial Services; Education
  • 17 Nov 2003
  • Research & Ideas

The Business Case for Diabetes Disease Management

out e-mail or making phone calls to remind patients of test and checkup dates. Another route is to offer a combined monitoring, tracking, and alert system. This method automatically lets the healthcare provider know if patients skip their... View Details
Keywords: by Martha Lagace; Health
  • 18 Jun 2012
  • Research & Ideas

Better by the Bunch: Evaluating Job Candidates in Groups

Protection Act of 2006, which mandated in part that employees be automatically enrolled in a pension plan upon hiring and must choose to opt out rather than opt in—Bohnet, Bazerman, and van Geen decided to... View Details
Keywords: by Maggie Starvish
  • 27 Jul 2011
  • Research & Ideas

Customer Loyalty Programs That Work

Successful retailers connect with customers via loyalty programs at three levels. The first is an introduction of sorts: the customer receives a generic reward for enrolling in the program. At the second level, the retailer contacts the... View Details
Keywords: by Maggie Starvish; Retail
  • 03 Feb 2015
  • First Look

First Look: February 3

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 age-matched coworkers participating in... View Details
Keywords: Sean Silverthorne
  • 31 Mar 2009
  • First Look

First Look: March 31, 2009

agency, but only to the extent that indirectness signals reduced foreknowledge and/or control. Experiment 3 indicates that effects of indirect agency result from a failure to automatically consider the potentially dubious motives of... View Details
Keywords: Martha Lagace
  • 26 Mar 2019
  • First Look

New Research and Ideas, March 26, 2019

record health worker attendance and patient adherence to protocol, and they automatically prompt follow-up treatment. We combine data from surveys, independent field visits, and government registers to identify impacts on TB-control... View Details
Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

Are you looking for?

→Search All HBS Web