Over 275 pension experts and researchers from 53 countries registered to participate in a recent webinar on Annuities, Selection, and the Drawdown of DC Balances with Professor James Poterba, Mitsui Professor of Economics at MIT and President of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a non-profit research organization with nearly 1,600 affiliated economists.
The webinar was hosted by CEPAR and the International Pension Research Association (IPRA), in collaboration with the OECD, Netspar and the Pension Research Council at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor James Poterba presented new estimates of the expected present discounted value of payouts in the single-premium individual immediate annuity market in the United States, applying the same metric to deferred annuities that do not begin payouts for several decades. He highlighted the importance of the longer lifespan of the typical annuitant, relative to the typical member of the population at large, for annuity valuation, and discussed the role of required minimum distributions from DC plan accounts as an alternative to annuitization.
Presentation slides are available online and the video recording can be watched below.
James Poterba is the Mitsui Professor of Economics at MIT and the President of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a non-profit research organization with nearly 1600 affiliated economists. He has served as President of the Eastern Economic Association and the National Tax Association, as vice president of the American Economic Association, and as a director of the American Finance Association (AFA). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the AFA, the British Academy and the Econometric Society.
Dr Poterba's research focuses on how taxation affects the economic decisions of households and firms, particularly those involving saving and portfolio behavior. His recent research has analyzed the determinants of retirement saving, the draw-down of assets after households reach retirement, and the role of tax-deferred retirement saving programs such as 401(k) plans in contributing to retirement security.
Dr Poterba is a trustee of the College Retirement Equity Fund (CREF) and the TIAA-CREF mutual funds. He is a past trustee of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and a former editor of the Journal of Public Economics. He is a coauthor of The Role of Annuity Markets in Financing Retirement (2001), and an editor or coeditor of Global Warming: Economic Policy Responses (1991), International Comparisons of Household Saving (1994), Empirical Foundations of Household Taxation (1996), Fiscal Institutions and Fiscal Performance (1999), Fiscal Reform in Colombia (2005), and Economic Analysis of Infrastructure Investment (forthcoming). Dr. Poterba served as a member of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform in 2005.
Dr Poterba holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard College and a D. Phil. in Economics from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He has been an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, a Batterymarch Fellow, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences, and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 2014 he received the Daniel M. Holland Medal from the National Tax Association for the study and practice of public finance.
The webinar was co-hosted by CEPAR in collaboration with IPRA, which is a new international organisation established with the aim of improving the quality and impact of research on pensions and related ageing issues to optimise social and economic outcomes for an ageing world. Its inaugural executive committee comprises representatives of the four founding organisations CEPAR, the Pension Research Council at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Netspar at Tilburg University, and the OECD.
Individual researchers and organisations including policy groups from across the world, interested in pensions and related ageing issues, are welcome to join the association.