Authors:

  • John Beshears
  • David Laibson

Excerpt

Potential vs. realized savings under automatic enrollment. John Beshears, David Laibson, Brigitte Madrian, July 2018, Paper, "Previous research has documented the powerful impact that automatic enrollment has on retirement savings outcomes. When a savings plan’s default—the option that is implemented on behalf of any employees that do not actively elect an alternative option—is changed from not participating in the plan to contributing a positive fraction of pay to the plan, the proportion of employees contributing to the plan increases dramatically, and many employees who would otherwise have not participated begin to accumulate plan balances (Madrian and Shea, 2001; Choi, et al., 2002 and 2004; Beshears, et al., 2008)." Link