Borrowing to Save? The Impact of Automatic Enrollment on Debt

John Beshears, James Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte Madrian and William Skimmyhorn

No 25876, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Does automatic enrollment into a retirement plan increase borrowing outside the plan? We study a natural experiment created when the U.S. Army began automatically enrolling newly hired civilian employees into the Thrift Savings Plan. Four years after hire, automatic enrollment causes no significant change in credit scores (point estimate 0.001 standard deviations) or debt balances excluding auto loans and first mortgages (point estimate -0.6% of annual salary). We also find no significant increase in auto loan and first mortgage balances in our main regression specification, although the estimated increases in these categories are economically and statistically significant in alternative specifications.

JEL-codes: D12 D14 D15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-05
Note: AG LS PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Published as JOHN BESHEARS & JAMES J. CHOI & DAVID LAIBSON & BRIGITTE C. MADRIAN & WILLIAM L. SKIMMYHORN, 2022. "Borrowing to Save? The Impact of Automatic Enrollment on Debt," The Journal of Finance, vol 77(1), pages 403-447.

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