Retirement Income Journal
The information forum of the decumulation industry.

The recent convergence of the global aging crisis and the global financial crisis has sparked the publication of hundreds if not thousands of significant academic studies related to retirement income financing. 

As basic research, this work doesn’t necessarily have immediate business or public policy applications. But it will undoubtedly provide the intellectual foundation from which new financial products and new policies eventually spring.  

We asked academics in the field to identify significant work that they read in 2011, and these were some of the studies they recommended. Some of these pieces appeared earlier in different form—as they evolved from briefs to working papers to journal articles.

Two major themes run through the majority of these papers. The first involves the optimal use of annuities in personal retirement income strategies. The second involves the role of behavioral finance in personal financial decision-making. There’s also an article on the size of public pension debt and one that questions the social payoff from investment in financial education.