Publisher Description

Scores of lawsuits have pushed retirement plan sponsors to shorter, easier-to-navigate menus, but – as Ian Ayres and Quinn Curtis argue in this work – we've only scratched the surface of retirement plan design. Using participant-level plan data and straightforward tests, Ayres and Curtis show how plan sponsors can monitor plans for likely allocation mistakes and adapt menus to encourage success. Beginning with an overview of the problem of high costs and the first empirical evidence on retirement plan fee lawsuits, they offer an overview of the current plan landscape. They then show, based on reforms to a real plan, how streamlining menus, eliminating pitfalls, and adopting static and dynamic limits on participant allocations to certain risky assets or 'guardrails' can reduce mistakes and lead to better retirement outcomes. Focusing on plausible, easy-to-implement interventions, Retirement Guardrails shows that fiduciaries need not be limited to screening out funds but can design menus to actively promote good choices.

Author Biography

Ian Ayres is a lawyer and economist. They are Deputy Dean and the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professor at Yale Law School and a Professor at Yale's School of Management. Quinn Curtis is Professor of Law and an Economist at the University of Virginia School of Law. His work focuses on the regulation of retirement plans and investments.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The case for proactive fiduciaries; 2. Fees and dominated funds; 3. Of lawsuits and letters; 4. What more fiduciaries should learn: Assessing the prevalence of allocation errors; 5. What more fiduciaries should learn: Assessing whether participants portfolios perform poorly; 6. What fiduciaries can do to remedy menu misuse: Different ways to implement streamlining and guardrailing; 7. How should fiduciaries trade-off divergent participant interests?; 8. Can streamlining and guardrailing mitigate allocation error?; 9. The growing misuse of brokerage windows; Conclusion; Index.

Review

'A masterpiece of meticulous and exhaustive research ... an insightfully informative, thoughtful, thought-provoking, and highly recommended contribution to personal, professional, college, and university library Contemporary Economics and Money/Finance Studies collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.' James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review

Promotional

Uses real plan data to show that retirement plans should limit an employee's ability to unwisely allocate their investments.

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