The Downward-Sloping Glidepath

When the conventional target-date allocation path is the wrong answer.
Upcoming · Working Paper
Upcoming

This paper is in progress. The summary below previews what it will cover; the working paper and a less-technical write-up will be published here when ready.

Target-date funds reduce equity exposure as retirement approaches. The shape of that reduction is treated as obvious. It isn't.

This paper examines the conditions under which the conventional downward-sloping equity glidepath is suboptimal, and derives alternative allocation structures that better match liability profiles under stochastic returns. The result challenges a default that has gone almost entirely unquestioned in retirement-account design.