Conference on Retirement Research.

• Position: National Bureau of Economic Research conference

The NBER's Program on Aging held a Conference on Retirement Research on October 20 and 21. The conference organizers were NBER Research Associates Jeffrey R. Brown of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Jeffrey Liebman of Harvard University, and David A. Wise of Harvard University, who directs the NBER's Aging Program.

The NBER has an ongoing grant from the Social Security Administration, as part of the Retirement Research Consortium. The grant has funded analysis of a wide range of issues related to Social Security. Selected papers written under the grant were presented at the conference, which was also funded through the grant. The papers were:

Jeffrey Liebman, and Emmanuel Saez, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "Earnings Responses to Increases in Payroll Taxes"

Discussant: Bruce Meyer, University of Chicago and NBER

James M. Poterba, MIT and NBER; Joshua Rauh, University of Chicago and NBER; Steven Venti, Dartmouth College and NBER; and David A. Wise, "Reducing Social Security PRA Risk at the Individual Level--Lifecycle Funds and No-loss Strategies"

Discussant: Douglas Elmendorf, Federal Reserve Board

Gopi Shah Goda, Stanford University; John Shoven, Stanford University and NBER; and Sita Slavov, Occidental College, "Social Security and Medicare: Removing the Disincentives for Long Careers"

Discussant: Erzo Luttmer, Harvard University and NBER

Jeffrey R. Brown and Scott J. Weisbenner, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and NBER, "Who Chooses Defined Contribution Plans?"

Discussant: Brigitte C. Madrian, Harvard University and NBER

Alan J. Auerbach and Ronald Lee, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "Notional Defined Contribution Pension Systems in a Stochastic Context: Design and Stability"

Discussant: Jeffrey Liebman

Andrew Biggs and Clark A. Burdick, Social Security Administration, and Kent Smetters, University of Pennsylvania and NBER, "Pricing Personal Account Benefit Guarantees: A Simplified Approach"

Discussant: George Pennacchi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

John Geanakoplos, Yale University, and Stephen P. Zeldes, Columbia University and NBER, "Facilitating Comparisons between DB and DC Systems: Can a PRA System Have the Same Features as the Current Social Security System"

Discussant: Jason Furman, New York University

James M. Poterba, Steven Venti, and David A. Wise, "The Decline of Defined Benefit Retirement Plans and Asset Flows"

Discussant: Jonathan Skinner, Dartmouth College and NBER

Alexander Ludwig, University of Mannheim; Axel Boersch-Supan, University of Mannheim and NBER; and Dirk Krueger, Goethe University, Frankfurt, "Demographic Change, Relative Factor Prices, International Capital Flows, and Welfare"

Discussant: James M. Poterba

Andrew Samwick, Dartmouth College and NBER, "Changing Progressivity as a Means of Risk Protection in Investment-Based Social Security"

Discussant: Michael Hurd, RAND Corporation and NBER

Martin S. Feldstein, Harvard University and NBER, "Reducing the Risk of Investment Based Social Security" (NBER Working Paper No. 11084)

Discussant: David Wilcox, Federal Reserve Board

John Beshears, Harvard University; James J. Choi, Yale University and NBER; David Laibson, Harvard University and NBER; and Brigitte C. Madrian, "The Importance of Default Options for Retirement Saving Outcomes: Evidence from the United States"

Discussant: Jeffrey R. Brown

David M. Cutler and Edward L. Glaeser, Harvard University and NBER, and Allison B. Rosen, University of Michigan, "Trends in Risk Factors in the United States, 1971-5 versus 1999-2002"

Discussant: Jim Smith, RAND Corporation

Liebman and Saez use SIPP data matched to longitudinal uncapped earnings records from the Social Security Administration for 1981 to 1999 to analyze earnings responses to increases in tax rates and to inform discussions about the likely effects of raising the Social Security taxable maximum. The earnings distribution of workers around the current taxable maximum is inconsistent with an annual model in which people are highly responsive to the payroll tax rate, even in the subset of...