Three essays in retirement investing

As defined contribution (DC) plans continue to grow in popularity, the burden of funding retirement has been increasingly placed on the shoulders of individual investors. Individual investors are required make a significant number of decisions in order to achieve retirement success and may be poorly equipped to do so. These essays explore three aspects of the decisions faced by individual investors. The first essay explores the phenomenon of time varying risk aversion in which retirement plan participants exhibit inconsistent risk preferences in response to changes in market sentiment. The second essay explores how investment period affects the optimal level of equities to hold in the portfolio in order to better understand whether individuals should consider time horizon when constructing investment portfolios for long-term goals such as retirement. The third essay explores the potential benefits of defaulting investors into an annuity with an employer-sponsored defined contribution plan.