Carlin, Bruce I. and Davies, Shaun William, The Implementation of State Sponsored Retirement Plans (April 3, 2015). Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2589701

“State sponsored retirement plans have been proposed and implemented to provide people with new access to defined contribution retirement opportunities. Many of these people have no other options and typically have low income and are less educated. We study optimal plan implementation in a theoretical model and analyze how the right menu of portfolio options should be chosen based on the financial sophistication of the participants, their behavioral biases, the prevalent political philosophy, and the political economy. We consider how this menu of options changes when libertarian paternalism is also implemented and when financial literacy training is offered. The paper provides several novel positive and normative implications, which appear to be empirically plausible.”