Restructuring Retirement Risks

David Blitzstein is the Director of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Negotiated Benefits Department where he advises local unions in collective bargaining on pension and health insurance issues and consults with the Union's 150 jointly trusted health and welfare and pension plans nationwide. Mr. Blitzstein also serves as trustee of the UFCW Industry Pension Fund, and the UFCW National Health and Welfare Fund. Mr. Blitzstein represents the UFCW as a member of the working committee of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans. In addition he serves on the Pension Research Council Advisory Board at the Wharton School; he is a member of the Employee Benefits Research Institute and the National Academy of Social Insurance. He received the BS degree from the University of Pennsylvania and he received the MS in Labor Studies from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Olivia S. Mitchell is Executive Director of the Pension Research Council, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania , and the Director of the Boettner Center on Pensions and Retirement Research at the Wharton School. Concurrently Dr. Mitchell is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Co Investigator for the AHEAD/ Health and Retirement Studies at the University of Michigan. Dr. Mitchell's main areas of research and teaching are private and public insurance, risk management, public finance and labor markets, and compensation and pensions, with a US and an international focus. She received the BA in Economics from Harvard University and the MA and PhD degrees in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Stephen P. Utkus is the Director of the Vanguard Center for Retirement Research, where he conducts and sponsors research on retirement savings and retirement benefits. His current research examines attitudes and expectations regarding retirement, financial markets and employer-sponsored retirement plans; the psychological and behavioral aspects of participant decision-making; trading and investment behavior among retirement plan participants; fiduciary issues arising from retirement programs; and global trends in public and private pension plans. Mr. Utkus serves on the Pension Research Council Advisory Board and he is also a Visiting Scholar at the Wharton School. He received the BS in Computer Science from MIT and the M.B.A. in Finance from The Wharton School.