Contributions to 401(k) plans are now the most important form of retirement saving. Since 401(k) plans were introduced in the early 1980’s, they have expanded rapidly and continuously. By 1998, roughly half of all households were eligible to participate in 401(k) plans, and more than 36 million workers made contributions to these employer-provided saving plans. In 1995, the last year for which the U.S. Department of Labor has released definitive data, 401(k) contributions amounted to $87.4 billion, or 55 percent of all contributions to employer-sponsored pension plans. The level of contributions, and their share of all pension contributions, is probably significantly higher today. The spread of 401(k) plans is the most important indicator of the move to personal retirement saving. In 1980, almost 92 percent of pension-plan contributions were to traditional employer-provided plans, and about 64 percent of these contributions were to conventional defined-benefit plans. Today, almost 60 percent of contributions are to personal retirement accounts, including 401(k), IRA, and Keogh plans. Including employerprovided, non-401(k) defined-contribution plans, over 76 percent of contributions are to plans that are controlled in large measure by individuals. These individuals make participation, contribution, asset-allocation, and withdrawal decisions. In this paper, we describe the likely importance of 401(k) assets for future older Americans and the effect of investment decisions on asset accumulation. We also examine the extent to which retirement assets may be affected by several decisions: preretirement withdrawals, management fees and expenses, contribution rates, and early retirement. Our analysis focuses on 401(k) saving, but applies more broadly to other forms of individual retirement saving.

In macroeconomic models with flexible wages and prices, whether a tax is levied on producers or consumers does not affect its ultimate incidence. This equivalence breaks down in the presence of short-run nominal rigidities. Using both British and American data, we provide evidence against complete wage and price flexibility.

What Does Performance in Graduate School Predict? Graduate Economics Education and Student Outcomes by Susan Athey, Lawrence F. Katz, Alan B. Krueger, Steven Levitt and James Poterba. Published in volume 97, issue 2, pages 512-520 of American Economic Review, May 2007

New Evidence on the Money's Worth of Individual Annuities by Olivia S. Mitchell, James M. Poterba, Mark J. Warshawsky and Jeffrey R. Brown. Published in volume 89, issue 5, pages 1299-1318 of American Economic Review, December 1999

Report: Ad Hoc Search Committee for the Editor of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy by David Cutler, Amy Finkelstein, Adriana Lleras-Muney, James Poterba, David Romer and Robert Shimer. Published in volume 103, issue 3, pages 774 of American Economic Review, May 2013

This paper presents a list of the top 20 articles published in the American Economic Review during its first 100 years. This list was assembled in honor of the AER's one-hundredth anniversary by a group of distinguished economists at the request of AER's editor. A brief description accompanies the citations of each article.