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Retirement Plan Reforms in the Absence of a Retirement Policy

"[W]hile retirement savings in the United States remain largely tethered to employment -- with individual employers still serving as critical intermediaries -- the last decade has witnessed the rise of retirement plans that limit the role of employers.... The experience of participants in such plans is likely to shape retirement policy in the coming years."

Professional Employer Organizations and the Transformation of Workplace Benefits

"While PEOs respond to long-standing challenges faced by smaller employers and have the potential to increase access to workplace benefits, this Article argues that they also introduce new and significant governance concerns that are not adequately addressed by the existing regulatory framework."

PEOs and the Transformation of Workplace Benefits

"While [Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs)] respond to long-standing challenges faced by smaller employers and have the potential to increase access to workplace benefits, this Article argues that they also introduce new and significant governance concerns that are not adequately addressed by the existing regulatory framework.... [T]his Article recommends strengthening and uniformly applying registration, disclosure and oversight requirements for all non-employer intermediaries, including PEOs."

Are Two Employers Better than One? An Empirical Assessment of Multiple-Employer Retirement Plans

"This Article shows that the bipartisan enthusiasm for expanding multiple-employer arrangements rests on shaky theoretical and empirical considerations. Drawing on newly hand-collected data for multiple-employer plans in effect prior to 2019, it argues that overlooked agency costs, market opacity, and the limits of the fiduciary governance regime have undermined the gains from asset pooling and centralized plan administration in existing multiple-employer plans. Furthermore, while larger single-employer plans typically leverage economies of scale and greater bargaining power to reduce plan fees, the benefits of plan size have not mapped directly onto existing multiple-employer plans."

Trusts No More: Rethinking the Regulation of Retirement Savings in the United States

"This Article identifies the flaws in the analogy and analyzes the shortcomings of a regulatory framework that, despite dramatic changes in the nature of modern pension benefits, still regards employees as gift recipients, grants both settlor and trustee rights to employers, and increasingly relies on trust-based fiduciary obligations to prevent employers from prioritizing the interests of their non-employee stakeholders over the interests of pension plan participants."