Overview
Jeffrey R. Brown is the Dean and Josef and Margot Lakonishok Professor of Business at the University of Illinois and former director of the NBER Retirement Research Center (RRC). His research spans retirement income economics, annuity markets, retirement saving behavior, and the behavioral economics of financial decision-making. He co-directs the NBER Retirement and Disability Research Center (RDRC) with James Choi and Courtney Coile.
Key Contributions / Features
- NBER RRC synthesis (Brown, Choi, Coile, and Woodbury 2020): Review of 5 years of RRC research on SS claiming, health/financial well-being, and behavioral retirement saving; surfaces earnings test causal evidence and Danish passive-saver finding.
- Procrastination and present bias (Brown and Previtero 2014): Identified procrastinators via health-plan open-enrollment timing; found procrastinators 2.4 pp less likely to participate in supplemental retirement savings plans.
- Personality and retirement saving (Xu, Brown, and Roberts 2016; Xu, Beller, Roberts, and Brown 2015): Documented that conscientiousness reduces financial distress and is positively associated with nonpension wealth; neuroticism raises financial distress.
- Framing and Social Security claiming (Brown, Kapteyn, and Mitchell 2016): Information-framing affects expected SS claiming behavior.
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