We study the causal effects of precommitment framing, motivational deadlines, and semi-personalized information on military servicemembers’ retirement savings using a randomized field experiment. Low-cost emails highlighting a motivational deadline or semi-personalized salary information increased participation by about 1 percentage point (control mean is 1.25 percent) and contribution rates by about 0.05 percentage points (control mean is 3.92 percent) among previous non-participants. These programs demonstrate a cost-effective and scalable tool by which managers can increase employees’ retirement savings.

We evaluate the effect that payday loan access has on credit and labor market outcomes of individuals in the U.S. Army. Using the conditional random assignment of service members to different locations, we employ three identification strategies: cross-sectional variation in state policies, within-term variation in payday lending access, and a difference-in-difference analysis using the national Military Lending Act. We find few adverse effects of payday loan access on service members when using any of these methods, even when we examine dozens of subsamples that explore potential differential treatment effects.

Does automatic enrollment into a retirement plan increase financial distress due to increased borrowing outside the plan? We study a natural experiment created when the U.S. Army began automatically enrolling newly hired civilian employees into the Thrift Savings Plan. Four years after hire, automatic enrollmentincreases cumulative contributions to the plan by 4.1% of annual salary, but we find little evidence ofincreased financial distress. Automatic enrollment causes no significant change in credit scores, debt balances excluding auto debt and first mortgages, or adverse credit outcomes, with the possible exception of increasedfirst‐mortgage balances in foreclosure.