Strengthening the U.S. Retirement Savings System

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nam Dinh Pham ◽  
Alexander J. Triantis
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Stephen Roll ◽  
Sam Bufe ◽  
Olga Kondratjeva ◽  
Michal Grinstein-Weiss

Abstract In 2015, the U.S. Treasury Department launched myRA, a no-fee retirement account designed for people who lacked employer-sponsored retirement options. We report findings from two behavioral field experiments intended to motivate interest in using the tax refund to open and fund myRAs directly through the tax-filing process. These experiments, administered to more than 100,000 low-income tax filers in 2016, embedded persuasive messages in emails sent to filers and directly within online tax-filing software. We find that interest in myRA was generally very low, although interest and enrollment intentions varied depending on the framing of the program's benefits.


2002 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-102
Author(s):  
David A. Hildebrandt ◽  
Edward Ferrigno

This article discusses the use of employer stock as the primary investment for employees’ retirement savings in U.S. tax-qualified financial participation plans. The principle U.S. government policy in support of tax-qualified financial participation plans is the promotion of an employee's accumulation of assets for retirement. For more than a century, the use of employer stock to fund financial participation plans in the U.S. has been a successful partnership for employees and employers. The recent bankruptcy of ENRON, one of the largest U.S. energy companies, has brought the debate on this issue into a new phase. The paper asks the question: Did the U.S. system fail or did ENRON plan administrators fail to follow the rules of the system?


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Pamela D. Morris

<em>The growing number of Defined Contribution Plans available in the U.S. has presented many in the U.S. work force with investment decisions. Decisions many of these workers have not been faced with in the past. An analysis of the Survey of Consumer Finance data over the early portion of the sample period, 1992-2010 has shown that the annual average percentage of liquid retirement plan savings allocated to equity assets increased from 43.02% to 66.42%. In 2010, after the subprime crisis, the allocation to equity declined but remained high at 50.65%, even though the market in 2001 and 2008 changed the allocation for many participants. Researchers attempt to find the reason that retirement savings plan participants have chosen to take a riskier position over the years. After controlling for factors such as age and income classifications, this study finds the educational classification to be a significant factor in explaining the percentage that participants allocate to the relatively riskier assets.</em>


Author(s):  
R. D. Heidenreich

This program has been organized by the EMSA to commensurate the 50th anniversary of the experimental verification of the wave nature of the electron. Davisson and Germer in the U.S. and Thomson and Reid in Britian accomplished this at about the same time. Their findings were published in Nature in 1927 by mutual agreement since their independent efforts had led to the same conclusion at about the same time. In 1937 Davisson and Thomson shared the Nobel Prize in physics for demonstrating the wave nature of the electron deduced in 1924 by Louis de Broglie.The Davisson experiments (1921-1927) were concerned with the angular distribution of secondary electron emission from nickel surfaces produced by 150 volt primary electrons. The motivation was the effect of secondary emission on the characteristics of vacuum tubes but significant deviations from the results expected for a corpuscular electron led to a diffraction interpretation suggested by Elasser in 1925.


Author(s):  
Eugene J. Amaral

Examination of sand grain surfaces from early Paleozoic sandstones by electron microscopy reveals a variety of secondary effects caused by rock-forming processes after final deposition of the sand. Detailed studies were conducted on both coarse (≥0.71mm) and fine (=0.25mm) fractions of St. Peter Sandstone, a widespread sand deposit underlying much of the U.S. Central Interior and used in the glass industry because of its remarkably high silica purity.The very friable sandstone was disaggregated and sieved to obtain the two size fractions, and then cleaned by boiling in HCl to remove any iron impurities and rinsed in distilled water. The sand grains were then partially embedded by sprinkling them onto a glass slide coated with a thin tacky layer of latex. Direct platinum shadowed carbon replicas were made of the exposed sand grain surfaces, and were separated by dissolution of the silica in HF acid.


Author(s):  
A. Toledo ◽  
G. Stoelk ◽  
M. Yussman ◽  
R.P. Apkarian

Today it is estimated that one of every three women in the U.S. will have problems achieving pregnancy. 20-30% of these women will have some form of oviductal problems as the etiology of their infertility. Chronically damaged oviducts present problems with loss of both ciliary and microvillar epithelial cell surfaces. Estradiol is known to influence cyclic patterns in secretory cell microvilli and tubal ciliogenesis, The purpose of this study was to assess whether estrogen therapy could stimulate ciliogenesis in chronically damaged human fallopian tubes.Tissues from large hydrosalpinges were obtained from six women undergoing tuboplastic repair while in the early proliferative phase of fheir menstrual cycle. In each case the damaged tissue was rinsed in heparinized Ringers-lactate and quartered.


1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-198
Author(s):  
Joseph R. Zakhary

In California Dental Association v. FTC, 119 S. Ct. 1604 (1999), the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that a nonprofit affiliation of dentists violated section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA), 15 U.S.C.A. § 45 (1998), which prohibits unfair competition. The Court examined two issues: (1) the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) jurisdiction over the California Dental Association (CDA); and (2) the proper scope of antitrust analysis. The Court unanimously held that CDA was subject to FTC's jurisdiction, but split 5-4 in its finding that the district court's use of abbreviated rule-of-reason analysis was inappropriate.CDA is a voluntary, nonprofit association of local dental societies. It boasts approximately 19,000 members, who constitute roughly threequarters of the dentists practicing in California. Although a nonprofit, CDA includes for-profit subsidiaries that financially benefit CDA members. CDA gives its members access to insurance and business financing, and lobbies and litigates on their behalf. Members also benefit from CDA marketing and public relations campaigns.


Author(s):  
K.H. Westmacott

Life beyond 1MeV – like life after 40 – is not too different unless one takes advantage of past experience and is receptive to new opportunities. At first glance, the returns on performing electron microscopy at voltages greater than 1MeV diminish rather rapidly as the curves which describe the well-known advantages of HVEM often tend towards saturation. However, in a country with a significant HVEM capability, a good case can be made for investing in instruments with a range of maximum accelerating voltages. In this regard, the 1.5MeV KRATOS HVEM being installed in Berkeley will complement the other 650KeV, 1MeV, and 1.2MeV instruments currently operating in the U.S. One other consideration suggests that 1.5MeV is an optimum voltage machine – Its additional advantages may be purchased for not much more than a 1MeV instrument. On the other hand, the 3MeV HVEM's which seem to be operated at 2MeV maximum, are much more expensive.


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