At retirement, some of the most complicated decisions are about how to spend down (decumulate) assets in order to provide a reliable stream of income after you stop working. These decisions include questions of how long to work, when to claim Social Security benefits, how to draw down retirement funds, and how to include pensions and life annuities. Professor Suzanne Shu has been researching these difficult questions for over twenty years and her research provides insights on how both individual psychological differences and situational factors can affect these decisions, with the goal of helping people improve their retirement income decision making. In this session, Professor Shu will share the findings from her research and encourage you to think about your own retirement decisions in new ways.

Note: The Provost’s Office of Faculty Development and Diversity offers this program as part of a work-life series to support faculty in their work-life aspirations and in understanding how decisions are made. This program is not intended to provide financial advice, endorse any products, but to share findings from research about financial decision making.

Presenter:
Suzanne B. Shu is the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management within the SC Johnson College of Business. The types of decisions analyzed in her research include consumer self-control problems and consumption timing issues, with important implications for both negative behaviors (such as procrastination) and positive behaviors (such as saving). Her work on financial decisions has focused specifically on decumulation during retirement (annuities, Social Security claiming) as well as on perceived fairness for financial products.

In the health domain, Shu has worked on grant-funded projects using behavioral economics to encourage hypertension medication adherence, reduce procrastination in mammogram screenings, increase adherence to weight loss programs, and promote colon cancer screenings.

Shu has taught marketing and decision making courses to MBA students at the University of Chicago, Southern Methodist University, INSEAD, and UCLA. She is also an NBER faculty research fellow, holds a joint faculty appointment at the UCLA Medical School, and has been a visiting scholar for several years at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Shu received a PhD from the University of Chicago; she also holds a BS in electrical engineering and masters in electrical engineering from Cornell University.