The Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and the Investment Company Institute (ICI) have been collaborating for the past two years to collect data on participants in 401(k) plans. This effort, known as the EBRI/ICI Participant-Directed Retirement Plan Data Collection Project, has obtained data for 401(k) plan participants from certain of EBRI and ICI sponsors and members serving as plan r...

This article explores recent trends in the size and performance of the equity investments of state and local pension plans. It also provides a context for the discussion about investing Social Security trust fund reserves in private equities. Equity holdings and returns for five of the largest private pension plans were compared with those of state and local pension plans. Key findings discusse...

optimal capacitor placement, considering power system loss reduction, voltage profile improvement, line reactive power decrease and power factor correction, is of particular importance in power system planning and control. the distribution system operator calculates the optimal place, number and capacity of capacitors based on two major purposes: active power loss reduction and return on invest...

Physicians are practicing in an era in which they are often expected to write business plans in order to acquire, develop, and implement new technology or programs. This task is yet another reminder of the importance of business principles in providing quality patient care amid allocation of increasingly scarce resources. Unfortunately, few physicians receive training during medical school, res...

Sponsors of defined contribution plans often hire financial advisors to help them to design and monitor these plans. I compare the designs of plans that advisors help create and monitor (client plans) to the designs of plans that the advisors use themselves (advisor plans). I find that advisors have an impact on the investment menus of their clients. Compared to an average pair of plans, a pair...

We provide evidence that political pressure creates incentives for defined benefit pension plans to use higher discount rates, thus artificially reducing the reported cost of these promises. generate our inferences using a unique panel dataset all local from Pennsylvania 2003–2013, and by comparing differential response managed appointed versus elected officials during period where there was do...

t Wilkie's stochastic investment model and its variants have been increasingly applied by actuaries around the world to actuarial modeling and simulation. This paper performs time series outlier analysis on retail price inflation, which is the driving force of Wilkie's composite model. The data come from four developed countries: the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia. The...