A new RSI working paper, “Longevity, Health and Housing Risks Management in Retirement” by Pierre-Carl Michaud and Pascal St-Amour, is available online.

We would like to congratulate Benoit Dostie, RSI team member, who has been appointed to the Canadian Statistics Advisory Council, for a three-year term.

Our 3rd event on household finance took place on November 11 and 12. Annamaria Lusardi, our keynote speaker, as well as several high level researchers and team members took part. Watch the presentations on the Institute’s YouTube page.

The publication “The Future of Long-Term Care in Quebec: What Are the Cost Savings from a Realistic Shift toward More Home Care?” by Pierre-Carl Michaud, Scientific Direction of the RSI, and his coauthors, is now available online on the Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques website.

Thanks to the financial support of the Institute, Iwan Meier, Professor in the Department of Finance at HEC Montréal, now holds the Research Professorship in Sustainable Finance.

Bertrand Achou, until recently Associate Researcher at the Institute, started in September a position as Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Michael Hurd of RAND Corporation joins the RSI advisory committee as a university researcher outside Quebec.

The RSI Index 2022, which measures Canadians’ knowledge of their retirement system, was made public on June 9. The report as well as a summary can be viewed online.
To learn more >>

A new, updated version of CREEi‘s Simulateur de revenu disponible (disposable income simulator, or SRD), programmed in Python and always open source, is now available.

New working paper by Derek Messacar, RSI Fellow, showing the use of tax-deductible savings plans by Canadians – in particular those with lower financial literacy – to lessen final tax balances owed.
To learn more >>

As of January 2022, the RSI team is very pleased to welcome Todd Morris  as an Associate Researcher. Holding a Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne, Todd specializes in public economics and microeconometrics. Welcome!

The paper “Responses to Eliminating Saving Commitments: Evidence from Mortgage Run-offs” by S. Andersen, P. d’Astous, J. Martinez-Correa and S. Shore is now available online (early view) in the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking.

Iwan Meier, Full Professor in the Department of Finance at HEC Montréal, becomes a Member of the Institute.
To learn more >>

New article by Marianne Laurin, Derek Messacar and Pierre-Carl Michaud in the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy (restricted access) on the link between financial literacy and the efficient use of tax-preferred savings accounts.

Franca Glenzer joined HEC Montreal’s Department of Finance in January as an Assistant Professor. Previously an Associate Researcher at the RSI, she becomes a Member of the Institute.
To learn more >>

On November 24, Philippe d’Astous won the teaching award in the Assistant Professor category as part of the 2021 Research and Teaching Awards of HEC Montréal.

New article by Bertrand Achou in AEJ: Economic Policy (restricted access) on the interaction in the United States between home value and Medicaid, the public long-term care program. Previous version: RSI working paper #3.

New article by Yann Décarie and Pierre-Carl Michaud published in Canadian Studies in Population: “Counting the Dead: COVID-19 and Mortality in Quebec and British Columbia During the First Wave.”
To learn more >>

Irina Gemmo joined HEC Montreal’s Department of Finance in September as an assistant professor. Previously a fellow of the RSI, she therefore becomes a Member of the Institute.
To learn more >>

Pierre-Carl Michaud has been elected this year a Member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists by a committee of peers.
To learn more >>

As part of the 60th SCSE conference, the RSI and CREEi organized a session on long-term care that was chaired by Bertrand Achou.
View the program

Pierre-Carl Michaud, Philippe d’Astous, and Iwan Meier obtained an SSHRC Insight grant of $ 71,521 (October 2020 competition) for their project “Environmental Footprint of Mutual Funds and Pension Plans.”
To learn more >>

The RSI Index 2021, which measures Canadians’ general financial literacy and knowledge of the retirement system, has just been released. The report as well as an executive summary can be viewed online.
To learn more >>

Pierre-Carl Michaud, RSI Director, spoke about personal finance with Benjamin Croitoru for the podcast of the McGill Personal Finance Essentials online course.
Watch the video here

An innovative tool, which assesses individual retirement preparedness, is now available in open access.
To learn more >>

On June 16 (8:45 am-12:30 pm), an online academic mini-conference on the economics of ageing took place, organized with CREEi and CIREQ, which brought together three speakers: Naoki Aizawa, Cormac O’Dea and Martin B. Hackmann.
To learn more >>

On May 27, the online conference, “Virage vers les soins à domicile au Québec ? Enjeux et possibilités” (in French) on long-term care, took place. The event included a panel notably moderated by Bernard Morency who discussed various issues with Alain Dubuc, Pauline Marois and André Picard.
Videos now available >>

The article “Playing with Fire? Household Debt near Retirement in Canada,” by Nicolas Bédard and Pierre-Carl Michaud, was published in March 2021 in Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques.
To learn more >>

Yann Décarie, RSI Research Officer, gave a presentation at the QICSS on excess mortality during the first wave of COVID-19, based on CREEi working paper 20-08, which he co-wrote with Pierre-Carl Michaud.
To learn more >>

The article “Housing liquidity and long-term care insurance demand: A quantitative evaluation,” by Bertrand Achou, was published in February 2021 in the prestigious Journal of Public Economics.
To learn more >>

Several RSI team members obtain a nearly $195,000 SSHRC Insight Grant for their project titled “Income security in retirement: perceptions, incentives and behaviours.”
To learn more >>

On January 25, Marianne Laurin (M. Sc.) joined the RSI team as a Research Officer. Previously a student researcher at CREEi, she will work among other things on modelling employment and the CPP as part of the important microsimulation project in which the Institute is involved with various federal agencies.

Pierre-Carl Michaud and 4 other members of the RSI team examine the behaviours and intentions of Quebecers and Canadians with regards to taking QPP and CPP annuities.
To learn more >>

The CPR retirement preparation calculator, developed by a RSI team with the financial support of the Global Risk Institute, is now available in open access.
To learn more >>

The Canadians’ Preparation for Retirement (CPR) report released in June 2020 is now fully available in French.
To learn more >>

HEC Montréal obtained a grant from the John R. Evans Leaders Fund of the Canada Foundation for Innovation for a project of the RSI team that involves high performance computing on large sets of confidential microdata.
To learn more >>

This latest RSI report presents a new and detailed retirement preparedness calculator that includes an important, innovative stochastic component.

It allows to conclude that only 18% of households have less than 4 chances out of 5 of being prepared for retirement.
To learn more >>

A large, original web survey on the personal finances of Quebecers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic was fielded in May by the institute and is the subject of a 2nd research note, which draws a portrait of the beneficiaries of the CERB.
To learn more >>

The 2020 RSI Index of the knowledge of the retirement system (also dubbed “retirement literacy”) – built prior to the pandemic – stands at 38.2%, slightly above last year’s.
To learn more >>

The institute is gradually making available the survey data it generates to the research community through the Dataverse platform.
To learn more >>

A large, original web survey on the personal finances of Quebecers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic was fielded in May by the institute and is the subject of a research note.
To learn more >>

Increase the age of eligibility for the QPP? On January 20, 2020, new analyzes were presented on this topic and commented by a panel of renowned experts led by Bernard Morency.
To learn more >>

Revisit the material connected to the project on the complex choice between contributing to an RRSP or a TFSA, including the working paper and presentations from the breakfast seminar.

An analysis of the role of housing in the eligibility for the Medicaid program in the United States, and the implications of potential changes to the rules.
To learn more >>

Our 2nd CEAR-RSI Household Finance Workshop took place on November 15 and 16, 2019 in Old Montreal.
To learn more >>

Through a competitive process, the RSI was selected as academic partner of the Dynamic Microsimulation Initiative of Employment and Social Development Canada. As such, the RSI will receive nearly $1.4 million by 2023 in order to build a Canadian retirement simulation model with ESDC and Statistics Canada.
To learn more >>

Henri-Paul Rousseau joins the RSI as Adjunct Professor. Through his tremendous expertise, his will bring value to the research activities of the Institute while contributing to the RSI’s reach and the development of its ties with the business community.
To learn more >>

On September 3, Bertrand Achou joined the Institute as an Associate Researcher. Holding a Ph. D. from the Paris School of Economics, his research focuses mainly on the economic and financial risks after retirement and the implications of this for insurance and public policy.

The RSI Index combines the responses of 3,000 Canadians aged 35 to 54 to 6 questions of general financial knowledge and 23 program-specific questions on 4 different topics, for a total of 29 questions. For the first edition, the overall index is 36.5%, reflecting a limited knowledge of our multi-pillar system and of certain key concepts.
To learn more >>

How will innovative products and technological progress contribute to consumers taking control of their financial well-being?

This was the them of the roundtable organized by HEC Montréal and the RSI on June 10, as part of the 25th Conference of Montreal. Moderated by Bernard Morency, the roundtable brought together Gregory Chrispin, from the Mouvement Desjardins; Adam Felesky, from Portage3; Mark Evans, from Conquest Planning; and Pierre-Carl Michaud, Director of the RSI.

On April 12, professor Philippe d’Astous received the Financial Literacy Research Award for a paper presented the day before, during GFLEC’s 5th Cherry Blossom Financial Education Institute which took place in Washington, D.C. The paper, co-authored by Martin Boyer and Pierre-Carl Michaud, is titled “Tax-Sheltered Retirement Accounts: Can Financial Education Improve Decisions?.”

To learn more >>

HEC Montréal News

On November 26, Pierre-Carl Michaud, the Director of the RSI, presented a conference entitled “Tax-Sheltered Retirement Accounts: Can Financial Education Improve Decisions?” at the National Research Symposium on Financial Literacy, in Toronto.
To learn more >>

The Retirement and Savings Institute (RSI) thanked its main financial partner, Power Corporation of Canada, at a recognition event held on May 30 at the School.
To learn more >>