Cormac O'Dea Publications

We study how couples allocate retirement-saving contributions across each spouse's account. In a new dataset covering over a million US individuals, we find retirement contributions are not allocated to the account with the highest employer match rate. This lack of coordination—which goes against the assumptions of most models of household decision-making—is common, costly, persistent over time, and cannot be explained by inertia, auto-enrollment, or simple heuristics. Complementing the administrative evidence with an online survey, we find that inefficient allocations reflect both financial mistakes as well as deliberate choices, especially when trust and commitment inside the households are weak.

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic reduction in employment and hours worked in the US economy. The decline can be measured using conventional data sources such as the Current Population Survey and in the number of individuals filing for unemployment. However, given the unprecedented pace of the ongoing changes to labor market conditions, detailed, up-to-date, high frequency data on wages, employment, and hours of work is needed. Such data can provide insights into how firms and workers have been affected by the pandemic so far, and how those effects differ by type of firm and worker wage level. It can also be used to detail – in real time – the state of the labor market.