February 2021
09Feb

Debt for Climate: Green Bonds and Other Instruments

By Paul Rose This chapter, prepared for the Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Climate Finance and Investment Law (2020, Michael Mehling and Harro van Asselt (eds.)), examines the rise of green bonds, climate bonds, and other green financial instruments. Although climate finance has enjoyed positive momentum in recent years, this momentum is at risk—with the possibility of reversal—if climate markets fail to provide competitive risk-adjusted returns. For climate finance to compete effectively, governments, issuers, and investors must resolve a...

February 9, 2021
Articles, Investing, , ,
Read more...
09Feb

Counter-Hegemonic Finance: The Gamestop Short Squeeze

By Usman W. Chohan The events that surrounded the short squeeze of various downtrodden stocks such as Gamestop (GME) allude to a counter-hegemonic financial effort, with small-scale investors pooling in to sabotage the short-positions of large Wall Street players such as hedge funds. This paper frames these events in terms of public reprisal for the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and public contempt for insular financial private interest. The discussion suggests that such people-power initiatives, abetted by powerful elite...

February 9, 2021
Articles, Investing, ,
Read more...
09Feb

Portfolio Management for Insurers and Pension Funds and COVID-19: Targeting Volatility for Equity, Balanced and Target-Date Funds with Leverage Constraints 2

By Bao Huy Doan , Jonathan J. Reeves , Michael Sherris Insurers and pension funds face the challenges of historically low interest rates and volatility in equity markets, that have been accentuated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent advances in equity portfolio management with a target volatility have been shown to deliver improved on average risk adjusted return, after transaction costs. This paper studies these targeted volatility portfolios in applications to equity, balanced and target-date funds with varying constraints...

February 9, 2021
Articles, Investing, Pension Management, , ,
Read more...
05Feb

Debt for Climate: Green Bonds and Other Instruments

By Paul Rose This chapter, prepared for the Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Climate Finance and Investment Law (2020, Michael Mehling and Harro van Asselt (eds.)), examines the rise of green bonds, climate bonds, and other green financial instruments. Although climate finance has enjoyed positive momentum in recent years, this momentum is at risk—with the possibility of reversal—if climate markets fail to provide competitive risk-adjusted returns. For climate finance to compete effectively, governments, issuers, and investors must resolve a...

February 5, 2021
Articles, Investing, , ,
Read more...
05Feb

Counter-Hegemonic Finance: The Gamestop Short Squeeze

By Usman W. Chohan The events that surrounded the short squeeze of various downtrodden stocks such as Gamestop (GME) allude to a counter-hegemonic financial effort, with small-scale investors pooling in to sabotage the short-positions of large Wall Street players such as hedge funds. This paper frames these events in terms of public reprisal for the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and public contempt for insular financial private interest. The discussion suggests that such people-power initiatives, abetted by powerful elite...

February 5, 2021
Articles, Investing, ,
Read more...
05Feb

Portfolio Management for Insurers and Pension Funds and COVID-19: Targeting Volatility for Equity, Balanced and Target-Date Funds with Leverage Constraints

By Bao Huy Doan, Jonathan J. Reeves, Michael Sherris Insurers and pension funds face the challenges of historically low interest rates and volatility in equity markets, that have been accentuated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent advances in equity portfolio management with a target volatility have been shown to deliver improved on average risk adjusted return, after transaction costs. This paper studies these targeted volatility portfolios in applications to equity, balanced and target-date funds with varying constraints on leverage....

February 5, 2021
Articles, Investing, Pension Management, , ,
Read more...

January 2021

29Jan

Unearned Income and Labor Supply: Evidence from Survivor Pensions in Austria

By René Böheim, Michael Topf We study the effect of lower unearned income on labor supply. To identify the causal effect of an unexpected reduction in unearned income, we exploit a policy reform that lowered survivor pensions in Austria. Men widowed after the survivor pension reform received an approximately 34% lower survivor pension than men widowed before the reform. We follow the employment history of both groups for 150 months and estimate the reform’s effect on labor supply using...

January 29, 2021
Articles, Pension design, , , ,
Read more...
29Jan

Robots and Labor in the Service Sector: Evidence from Nursing Homes

By Karen Eggleston, Yong Suk Lee, Toshiaki Iizuka In one of the first studies of service sector robotics using establishment-level data, we study the impact of robots on staffing in Japanese nursing homes, using geographic variation in robot subsidies as an instrumental variable. We find that robot adoption increases employment by augmenting the number of care workers and nurses on flexible employment contracts, and decreases difficulty in staff retention. Robot adoption also reduces the monthly wages of regular nurses,...

January 29, 2021
Articles, Labor Market, ,
Read more...
29Jan

Portfolio Management for Insurers and Pension Funds and COVID-19: Targeting Volatility for Equity, Balanced and Target-Date Funds with Leverage Constraints

By Bao Huy Doan, Jonathan J. Reeves, Michael Sherris Insurers and pension funds face the challenges of historically low interest rates and volatility in equity markets, that have been accentuated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent advances in equity portfolio management with a target volatility have been shown to deliver improved on average risk adjusted return, after transaction costs. This paper studies these targeted volatility portfolios in applications to equity, balanced and target-date funds with varying constraints on leverage....

January 29, 2021
Articles, Investing, ,
Read more...
21Jan

Executive Compensation: The Trend Toward One Size Fits All

By Felipe Cabezon This paper reports the prevalence of a “one-size-fits-all” trend in the structure of executive compensation plans. The way firms distribute total compensation across different components of pay –salary, bonus, stock awards, option awards, non-equity incentives, pensions, and perquisites– is becoming more similar since 2006. In particular, 25% of the variation across firms disappeared in the last ten years. Using close votes surrounding Say-on-Pay’s implementation, I find that shareholders’ influence on management decisions causes part of this...

January 21, 2021
Articles, Labor Market, ,
Read more...