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The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of financial literacy on personal retirement planning in Bukavu city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which is a Sub-Saharan underdeveloped country with a weak pension and social security system.

This study used a structural equation modeling and a sample of 361 public sector employees selected in Bukavu city in the DRC. The data were collected through a survey questionnaire, and the data were analyzed using SPSS and SMART PLS software.

The results from the study revealed that financial literacy has a significant impact on personal retirement planning. Two constructs of financial literacy, respectively, computation capability and financial knowledge were found to have a significant impact on personal retirement planning, while financial education and attitudes toward financial products were found not significant in explaining personal retirement planning.

The findings from this study can be used by policy makers in the DRC to design socioeconomic programs, aiming to increase the level of financial literacy in the country and awareness on personal retirement planning.

The reviewed studies were based mostly on developed countries, and countries were the social security system works effectively. We have not found a study on financial literacy and retirement planning that has been conducted in the DRC, which is a country with specific characteristics compared to developed countries.

The authors develop and validate a conceptual model, the retirement engagement model (REM), to understand the relationships between behavioral engagement (retirement information search), cognitive factors and engagement (e.g. beliefs and financial knowledge), emotional engagement (e.g. anxiety), and socio-demographic factors. Approach: The authors derive the REM through a three-step procedure: (1) an extensive literature review, (2) interactive feedback sessions with experts to confirm the model's academic and managerial relevance, and (3) an empirical test of the REM with field data (N = 583). The authors use a partial least squares (PLS) structural equation model and examine heterogeneity through a finite mixture model.

Around the globe, people are insufficiently engaged with retirement planning. The customer engagement literature offers rich insights into antecedents, outcomes, and barriers to engagement. However, customer engagement literature lacks insights into cognitive, emotional and behavioral factors that drive engagement in retirement planning, a utilitarian service context, which is important for financial well-being.

Beliefs such as perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits, barriers, and self-efficacy, together with trust and retirement anxiety, explain people's search for pension information. These factors can be used to define three clear, actionable segments of consumers.

The findings advance the customer engagement and transformative service research literature by generating insights on engagement with retirement planning, a utilitarian rather than hedonic service context that is especially relevant for financial well-being. The findings inform managerial practice and emphasize the relevance of including cognitive and emotional engagement factors that trigger behavioral engagement. The REM can help to improve pension communication. For example, the results indicate that marketers should stress the benefits of, rather than the barriers to, acquiring information.

Previous research has shown that self-employed workers are more likely than employees to retire late or to be uncertain about retirement timing. However, little is known about the underlying mechanisms. This study aims to fill this gap, by focusing on the explanatory role of various job characteristics – flexibility, autonomy, skills-job match and job security – for explaining differences in retirement preferences between the solo self-employed and employees.

Data were used of 8,325 employees and 663 solo self-employed respondents (age 45–64) in the Netherlands, who participated in 2016 in the Study on Transitions in Employment, Ability, and Motivation (STREAM). The outcome variable distinguished between early, on-time, late and uncertain retirement preferences. Multinomial logistic regression models were estimated, and mediation was tested using the Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) method.

The solo self-employed are more likely than employees to prefer late retirement (vs “on-time”) and to be uncertain about their preferred retirement age. Job characteristics mediate 21% of the relationship between solo self-employment and late retirement preferences: the self-employed experience more possibilities than employees to work from home and to choose their own working times, which partly explains why they prefer to retire late.

In discussions about retirement, often reference is made to differences in retirement savings and retirement regulations between the solo self-employed and employees. The current study shows that differences in job characteristics also partly explain the relatively late preferred retirement timing of solo self-employed workers.

The purpose of this study is to identify arrangements of fully funded defined contribution (FF-DC) pension plans associated with the continuity of retirement savings.

The authors adopted an experimental design composed of a control group and two treatment groups. In all groups, individuals made decisions throughout nine periods: five during the working period and four at the postretirement stage. The authors asked participants if they wanted to join a pension plan, and which plan. The authors offered three plans with different risk profiles: plan 1 (high risk), plan 2 (moderate) and plan 3 (low risk) and one risk-free plan, plan 4. In treatment groups 1 and 2, there was an automatic enrollment of the participants in the default plan (moderate risk), and in the following periods they had to decide whether to continue contributing, and in this case, to which plan, with a defined percentage.

In treatment scenarios, participants chose the riskiest plan in all periods of the experiment, and most of them chose the risk-free plan in period 5. These findings suggest that pension plans with automatic enrollment, employer matching and low risk foster the continuation of retirement savings.

The research has as limitation the fact that the sample is not representative of the population and therefore does not allow generalizations. This is because the authors use social media ads to prospect respondents.

The research's findings can be relevant for the design of public policies for private pension plans, suggesting that compulsory automatic enrollment can be used as default in plans offered by the employers. The results encourage the inclusion of behavioral elements in the design of the pension system, paying attention to the nudges. In this sense, it is possible to increase participation in the pension plan and develop low cost programs to increase the amount accumulated by people before retirement.

Decision-making architecture, such as automatic enrollment, can improve individuals' retirement decisions, affecting savings and welfare in the long run.

Although the effect of pension plan designs is widely studied in other countries, such as the United States and United Kingdom, the authors are unaware of a national empirical research that seeks to understand how different arrangements affect an individual choice through an experiment.

This article describes financial professionals' perceptions of their clients' financial behaviors and the explanatory factors underlying these behaviors.

In this qualitative research, the authors seek to understand financial professionals' experiences in relation to how their clients manage their own finances. The authors conduct and analyze 26 semi-structured interviews with financial professionals from several industries within the financial sector in Canada.

The professionals in this study noted that despite their clients' financial knowledge, several other factors can explain these individuals' financial behaviors. They include psychological factors (such as financial bias, the need for instant gratification, and the lack of awareness regarding the long-term effects of certain types of financial behaviors), financial habits (such as lifestyle, financial planning and lack of discipline) and the financial system's flexibility with respect to debt financing and repayment. These perceptions are categorized according to whether they are related to debt financing or repayment, savings or investments.

By using a qualitative methodology that relies on the perceptions of financial professionals, this study aims to better understand the financial behaviors of individuals and households, and these behaviors' underlying factors. This study's findings could be useful to various stakeholders interested, in one way or another, in financial literacy, such as organizations aiming to strengthen and promote financial literacy, educators, researchers, regulatory bodies of financial institutions and financial advisers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the conceptual framework about human resources downsizing and restructuring and how organizations of the public sector can do that effectively and efficiently. These facts drive to the conclusion that the implementation of early retirement incentives requires the most elaborate planning and execution to be effective, predictable and safe in the long term.

This paper adopts an analytical, descriptive methodology approach to describe the basic features of the data by using the descriptive research design. Data have been collected through different sources, which include secondary data, to introduce the theoretical literature of the subject as books, journals, articles, published working papers and referred previous studies related to the same subject.

Downsizing process is a deliberate administrative process that includes, but is not limited to, workforce reduction and is primarily aimed at achieving efficiency in public organizations. The definition of workforce downsizing may be narrowed to reducing the number of workers, or more likely to refer to general efforts to restructuring human resources in public organizations, Early Retirement Incentive Programs (ERIP) represents a viable alternative for organizations seeking to reduce staff. For the ERIP to be successful, the program coordinator must understand the business objectives and goals that the organization is trying to obtain.

Human resources strategies concerning downsizing public administration workforce should be more appropriate to those who leave the organization and those who stay at work, reducing the negative psychological, administrative and economical effects. This could be achieved through a strategy called early retirement incentive programs.

This paper aims to explore the challenges facing the development of a takāful retirement annuity plan in Malaysia. It also aims at exploring a new platform to re-launch the same product after being withdrawn from the Malaysian annuity market a few years ago.

The research adopts a qualitative approach to address the possible challenges hindering the development of a takāful retirement annuity plan in Malaysia. The research will not discuss the Sharīʿah issues deemed settled in previous researches but will only focus on technical challenges related to the instruments of investment and prudential measures.

The research found that various challenges face the development of a takāful annuity plan in Malaysia. Some of those challenges are the downsizing of the ṣukūk market, the shortage of long-term ṣukūk, longevity risk and risk-based capitalization. The research found that there is a need for a diversified portfolio of securities instead of solely using ṣukūk as an investment instrument in this product.

Re-launching the takāful annuity plan in Malaysia requires the identification of actual challenges facing the development of such a product. The product purported to be re-launched would benefit a large segment of retirees who do not have enough savings during the retirement age. The introduction of such a product will also expand the takāful market in annuities, which remains untapped.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether cross-country differences in pensionable age explain such differences in economic activity of people at near-retirement age.

The empirical study uses regression models for macro-panel encompassing 21 European countries in the period 2008–2014.

Empirical results indicate that pensionable age is a determinant of cross-country differences in employment rate in the near-retirement age group, and less a factor differentiating average effective retirement age. It turns out that other factors matter, including salaries and wages as percentage of GDP (treated as a proxy for the occupational composition of populations across the countries studied), self-employment, participation in education and training, or self-perceived health.

The problem of economic activity at the near-retirement age is complex and cannot be limited to legal regulations concerning pensionable age. The policy aiming at stimulating the economic activity of the near-elderly should include actions on many sides including labour market, pension system, education, training, or health care.

The results complement studies based on the single-country approach and demonstrate that pensionable age does not account for cross-country differences in terms of average effective age of retirement when controlling for other factors. Moreover, factors differentiating effective retirement age and employments rates across countries studied are not similar.

Trade relations between China and the USA have been marked by conflict, especially since China’s membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). These conflicts have been analyzed from a variety of perspectives, including the loss of jobs in the USA due to Chinese imports, competition in high technology sectors and the balance of trade. Conceptual frameworks have employed models of domestic differences as well as models of international power distribution. Among domestic differences examined are the existence of state-owned enterprises in China compared to the domination of the USA economy by private firms, the large role of the Communist Party in China and the influence of labor and environmental and labor groups in the USA. Power distribution theories focus on the systemic effects of the distribution of power on trade openness and on the pattern of intra-bloc versus between-bloc trade. This paper aims to examine the role of macroeconomic policy factors in China and the USA, in particular, the role of national patterns of savings, investment and consumption (both private and government). The paper concludes that insofar as the balance of trade is an important component of the trade conflict, domestic macroeconomic factors continue to be important. The resolution of the conflict will have to take into account the respective macroeconomic policies of China and the USA.

The design is an analytic case study of US–China trade relations with a particular focus on the balance of trade. The conceptual framework employed involves an analysis of macroeconomic policy categories, especially the overall pattern of savings (household, firm and government), investment and consumption. Process tracing over time since China's membership in the WTO is carried out with an eye toward the relationship between the balance of trade and macroeconomic policy.

The main findings are that there is a strong relation between the respective macroeconomic policies of the USA and China and their trade relations. The domestic political economy of the USA encourages consumption and a low rate of savings. The opposite is true of China where household income is low by design and national savings are high. China depends on the USA to consume what is not consumed domestically. The USA depends on Chinese imports for additional consumption encouraged by its low rate of savings. The two economies are locked in a mutual dependence.

Key research implications are that there should be more focus on domestic macroeconomic policies since these are the root causes of the trade imbalance. This is not to say that trade frictions centering on jobs, subsidies and competition in high technology are unimportant. However, without the resolution of differences in the management of macroeconomic policies, trade conflicts between the USA and China will continue.

Practical implications are huge, in some ways much more important than the academic implications. Macroeconomic policy differences in savings, investment, government spending, taxation and infrastructure are important. Furthermore, there are available tools in both China and the USA to manage the macroeconomy, particularly, monetary and fiscal policy.

One implication of this paper is that satisfaction or dissatisfaction of workers is dependent on income distribution which in turn affects trade. Treatment of people in different socioeconomic categories, such as the elderly, the young, and those at working age are a function of macroeconomic policies.

Many people have written about macroeconomics. It is a conventional subfield of economics. The originality of this paper lies in its advocacy of a shift of focus and attention and in the argument that traditional macroeconomics is related to trade. Despite its importance, macroeconomics has not been the center of attention for most political scientists, though economists have made it more central.