Working Papers

• Retention or Regressivity? The Empirical Effects of 401(k) Vesting Schedules, with Aaron Goodman, October 2025, Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Finance

  Vesting requirements are a common yet understudied feature of defined-contribution retirement plans. Using administrative recordkeeping data, we find that 30% of separations occur during participants’ vesting periods. The resulting forfeitures of employer contributions are concentrated among lower-income participants and make the distribution of 401(k) compensation significantly more regressive. Firms do not enjoy offsetting efficiency benefits: employing both cross-plan and within-plan identification strategies, we find no evidence that vesting exerts a causal retention effect. A linked survey shows informational frictions to be a key mechanism, as a majority of respondents do not know their current plan’s vesting rules.

  Presented at: NBER Aging Spring 2025, WFA 2025, NBER SI Household Finance 2025, NBER Labor Spring 2026

• Surveying Counterfactuals: Improving 401(k) Matches Using Hypothetical Choices, with Taha Choukhmane, Fiona Greig, Cormac O’Dea, and Lawrence Schmidt, March 2026

  Evaluating reforms requires predicting how individuals would behave under counterfactual policies and mapping those behavioral responses into welfare-relevant criteria. We use survey responses to hypothetical scenarios linked with administrative 401(k) data to address both in the context of designing employer matching formulas. We find that (i) these survey responses can accurately predict saving responses in administrative data, (ii) saving is inelastic to the match rate, and (iii) non-elective contributions do not crowd out employee saving. These patterns imply that (iv) plans combining lower match rates with non-elective contributions generate higher savings and more equitable match distributions, and (v) many existing plans—including safe-harbor formulas—are dominated along both dimensions. These conclusions hold for any objective function that values either higher saving or lower inequality, or both.

  Presented at: NBER Public Spring 2026

Work in Progress

• Earnings Shocks, Spousal Consumption and the Limits of Household Insurance, with Jin Cao

• Elite Social Status and Protection Against Economic Risk, with Florian Caro, Valerie Michelman, and Seth Zimmerman

• The Consumption Response to Household Expense Shocks, with Leo Feler and Kamila Janmohamed

Policy Reports

• Does 401(k) vesting help retain workers?, with Aaron Goodman, Febraury 2025

• Are Employers Optimizing Their 401(K) Match?, with Fiona Greig, Anna Madamba, Cormac O’Dea, Taha Choukhmane, and Lawrence Schmidt, May 2024