April 2026
08Apr

Informal workers in the rural sector in Colombia: Living conditions and social security

By Oscar Espinosa, Valeria Bejarano, Martha-Liliana Arias & Jorge-Iván González The existence of a high percentage of informal labour has a direct impact on the living conditions of millions of people and their families, especially in rural areas and developing countries. The implications of this problem present a challenge for public policy on employment, social security and business activity. Taking advantage of the wealth of microdata from the Great Integrated Household Survey (of national representation), our research aimed to...

April 8, 2026
Articles, Labor Market, , , ,
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01Apr

Climate Change as a Threat Multiplier in Contemporary Conflicts: Pathways, Evidence, and Legal-Policy Responses

By Hope Tendo This paper examines climate change as a “threat multiplier” in contemporary conflicts by analysing its causal pathways, empirical support, and the legal-policy responses required to mitigate associated security risks. It argues that climate change rarely operates as a direct driver of violence but instead intensifies existing socio-economic, political, and institutional vulnerabilities. The study evaluates scholarly and policy literature demonstrating that climatic stress interacts with fragile governance, contested land and resource tenure, livelihood insecurity, migration pressures, and state...

April 1, 2026
Articles, System Sustainability, , ,
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01Apr

Large Language Models in Financial Decision-Making: A Methodological Framework for Evaluating AI Trading Strategies

By Theo Nicolas Sitjar Large Language Models (LLMs) offer new possibilities for financial decision-making, but evaluating their effectiveness in trading requires systematic approaches. This paper describes a practical framework for assessing LLM performance in stock market scenarios. Our method follows a 5-step process: data preparation, prompt engineering, LLM inference, backtesting, and statistical analysis. We include memory mechanisms and standard risk metrics to evaluate trading strategies comprehensively. Through testing against fifteen traditional quantitative baseline strategies, we examine both the potential benefits...

April 1, 2026
Articles, Investment, , , ,
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01Apr

Gig Workers And Labour Law In India: Analysing The Legal Vacuum Under The Code On Social Security 2020

By Anshita Jain The rise of the gig economy in India has transformed traditional employment structures while exposing significant gaps in labour law protections. This paper analyses the legal status of gig and platform workers under the Code on Social Security, 2020, highlighting the challenges of worker classification and limited social security coverage. It argues that despite formal recognition, the absence of enforceable rights and clear accountability mechanisms leaves gig workers vulnerable. The paper concludes by suggesting the need for...

April 1, 2026
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March 2026
20Mar

Employee Satisfaction and Pension Shortfall Risk

By Annita Florou, Meng Li, Peter F. Pope & Nipat Puangjampa Defined benefit (DB) pension plans are important to employee welfare. However, they carry risk as they are subject to minimum funding requirements. We examine the effect of a relaxation in pension funding rules on employee satisfaction by exploiting the adoption of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21). We find that employees of DB firms are less satisfied with their firms and their senior managers, after...

March 20, 2026
Articles, Pension design, , , ,
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20Mar

Universal Owner and Impact of Its Engagement Program: An Analysis of Engagement Records of Japan’s GPIF

By Masahiro Shibata & Kazunori Suzuki This study examines the impact of Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) engagement program, leveraging a proprietary dataset of 26,792 engagements across 21 externally managed funds from fiscal years 2017 to 2022. As one of the largest universal owners globally, GPIF plays a pivotal role in influencing corporate behavior through structured engagements aimed at improving corporate governance, environmental sustainability, and financial performance. Despite growing global interest in engagement-driven stewardship, empirical evidence on its effectiveness...

March 20, 2026
Articles, Pension Management, , , ,
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20Mar

Non-contributory Pension Programs and Intra-household Inequality

By José L. Casco Non-contributory pension schemes are increasingly prevalent as countries seek to combat poverty, yet their role in shaping inequality remains underexplored. This paper studies how such programs alter intra-household inequality using data from Mexican household income and expenditure surveys. The analysis first examines a local pension program in Mexico City, embedding an age-based quasi-experimental design to identify beneficiaries within a structural model of extended households. Results show that the program shifted resources from men to women and...

March 20, 2026
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13Mar

Pension and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Sweden’s Transition from Defined Benefit to Defined Contribution

By Ai Jun Hou, Di Cui, Mingfa Ding, Yikai Han & Xiaoyang Li Sweden's 1999 pension reform-which replaced a defined-benefit (DB) regime with a notional defined-contribution (DC) scheme-changed incentives in ways that affect employees' career choice over the life cycle. We use Swedish administrative data and a difference-indifferences approach to study the impact of this reform on entrepreneurship. We find that entrepreneurial entry increases more after the reform among cohorts with greater exposure to the new DC pension system. The...

March 13, 2026
Articles, Pension design, , ,
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13Mar

Challenges of the Power of the New Longevity: Age Discrimination in the Workplace, and More, in Argentina

By Virginia Marturet Life expectancy has significantly increased, reaching an average of 77 years in Argentina. The current challenge is to enhance the quality of those years. Age discrimination is the third leading cause of discrimination worldwide and is prevalent in Argentina, particularly in workplaces, society, and daily life. Our current challenge is to make those years a life with more quality and fullness. What is the power of all that we have gained and how do we take advantage...

March 13, 2026
Aging, Articles, ,
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13Mar

Why Social Security Is Essential to Measuring Wealth Inequality

By Knowledge at Wharton Staff In this Q&A, professor Sylvain Catherine discusses why including Social Security fundamentally changes how we measure wealth inequality. His paper “Social Security and Trends in Wealth Inequality” was co-authored by Max Miller and Natasha Sarin and recently won the Dimensional Fund Advisors First Prize from the American Finance Association. The paper was previously awarded the Marshall Blume Prize in Financial Research from Wharton’s Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research, given annually to the best...

March 13, 2026
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