Scott Cederburg Wins Prestigious ICPM Research Award for Retirement Investment Study

 Scott Cederburg, associate professor of finance in the Eller College of Management, has been awarded the 2025 International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM) Research Award for his paper Beyond the Status Quo: A Critical Assessment of Lifecycle Investment Advice.

The ICPM Research Awards recognize innovation, practical applicability and research excellence in areas with real-world impact for pension organizations. The award highlights exceptional academic work that informs pension design, governance, risk management, long-term investing and related topics. Winners are also invited to share their findings at ICPM webinars and forums.

Cederburg’s paper challenges long-standing conventional wisdom about retirement investing. While traditional strategies advise diversifying across stocks and bonds and shifting more heavily into bonds with age, the research shows that an all-stock strategy—split roughly half between U.S. and half international equities—leads to stronger and safer retirement outcomes.

“Bonds may look safe in the short run, but over long periods they pose significant risks, especially during inflationary spikes,” Cederburg explains. “Stocks are volatile, but they provide higher average returns and the ability to recover after downturns, which makes them the safer long-term choice.”

The findings suggest that investors would be better off maintaining an all-equity portfolio across their lifetime. International equities, in particular, offer diversification and inflation protection that bonds fail to deliver over extended horizons.