Tag: pension freezes

Abstract Recent defined benefit (DB) pension freezes in large healthy firms such as Verizon and IBM, as well as terminations of plans in the struggling steel and airline industries, highlight the fact that these traditional pensions cannot be viewed as risk-free promises from the employee’s perspective. In this paper we develop an empirical dynamic programming…

Introduction The shift in pension coverage from defined benefit plans to 401(k)s has been underway since 1981. This shift is the result of three developments; 1) the addition of 401(k) provisions to existing thrift and profit sharing plans; 2) a surge of new 401(k) plan formation in the 1980s; and 3) the virtual halt in…