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Using Swedish administrative data and an event-study design, this paper studies the examine the impact of grandparenthood on retirement behaviour. For causal identification, I exploit conditionally random variation in the births of first grandchildren using an event study design. The effects of the arrival of the grandchild on retirement increase over time after the grandchild is born. The incremental effects are larger among grandparents in the upper half of the earnings distribution than among their counterparts.

We show that, after the revelation of financial fraud in a major pension fund manager, two-thirds of affected investors fail to divest. Inert investors are on average younger, of lower SES and more influenced by default options. The majority of those who divest move their money to the only state-run option on the fund menu. The revelation of fraud also induces a small movement of investors from non-fraudulent private investment funds to the state alternative. Our results illustrate that fraudulent fund managers may exploit widespread consumer biases in choice-oriented pension plans, and that information interventions by the government are important but far from fully effective in nudging victimized investors to take the right action. Pension plans may be characterized by investor inertia even under extreme circumstances such as fraud.

How did investors in the Swedish Premium Pension System (PPS) react to the stock markets shock ignited in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic? The share of investors that traded more than doubled, and trades shifted capital from equity funds to low risk interest funds. In economic terms, however, trading activity stayed at very low levels—less than two percent of investors traded in March 2020 and there was no effect on pension withdrawals.