This dissertation explains how the performance of the New York Stock Exchange has become vitally important to the methods by which a majority of Americans finance retirement. In 1974, the US Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), which extended comprehensive federal regulation to the private pension system for the first time. At the same time, Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission forced the New York Stock Exchange to adopt a negotiated commission rate system, introducing competition on the basis of the price of a stock trade for the first time in the Exchangeâs history. Both these measures were a response to the growth of institutional investing of pension funds. Increased competition on Wall Street forced stockbrokers to seek new methods, such as retirement investing, to increase trading volume. By creating a heavy regulatory burden, ERISA encouraged business to seek alternatives to the traditional defined benefit pension plan. Their response was to adopt defined contribution plans, in which the burden of responsibility falls to individual employees, who often lack specialized investment knowledge. The combined effects of ERISA and negotiated rates forced individuals to play a more active role in financing their own retirement, while also increasing their dependence on investment institutions and stock market performance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-03242016-124406 |
| Date | 01 April 2016 |
| Creators | Gajewski, Paula Kathleen |
| Contributors | Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Ph.D., David L. Carlton, Ph.D., Peter L. Rousseau, Thomas Alan Schwartz |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-03242016-124406/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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