Economic Rationality, Risk Presentation, And Retirement Portfolio Choice

This paper studies the propensity of individuals to violate implications of expected utility maximization in allocating retirement savings within a compulsory defined contribution retirement plan. The paper develops the implications and describes the construction and administration of a discrete choice experiment to almost 1200 members of Australia's mandatory retirement savings scheme. The experiment finds overall rates of violation of roughly 25%, and substantial variation in rates, depending on the presentation of investment risk and the characteristics of the participants.