November 2019

15Nov

Social Pensions and Market Values: A Conflict?

By Quentin Detienne, Elmar Schmidt Social occupational pension schemes, i.e. compulsory pension schemes that are the result of collective bargaining, fulfil an important social function. At the same time, they seem to conflict with some fundamental single market tenets, such as the European Union (EU) Single Market’s four fundamental freedoms and competition law principles. In this respect, occupational pension schemes in the Member States seem to embody the inherent tensions contained within the EU’s social market economy: a clash...

November 15, 2019
Articles, Pension design, ,
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08Nov

Sharpening the Teeth of EU Social Fundamental Rights? The Case of State Pension Age in the UK

By Hans van Meerten In this contribution I want to discuss an important and very topical EU Law element of the judgment regarding two claimants (Delve and Glynn), backed by BackTo60, versus the UK Department of Work and Pensions (hereafter: Delve and Glynn). Claimants argued inter alia that the UK State Pension Age (SPA)was discriminatory. I want to focus here not if SPA is discriminatory, but whether the (SPA) falls in the ambit of EU law. Didn’t the UK...

November 8, 2019
Articles, Regulation, System Sustainability, , ,
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08Nov

Robert C. Merton and the Science of Finance

By Zvi Bodie Starting with his 1970 doctoral dissertation and continuing to today, Robert C. Merton has revolutionized the theory and practice of finance. In 1997 Merton shared a Nobel Prize in Economics “for a new method to determine the value of derivatives.” His contributions to the science of finance, however, go far beyond that. In this essay I describe Merton’s main contributions. They include the following: 1. The introduction of continuous-time stochastic models (the Ito calculus) to the theory...

November 8, 2019
Articles, Investing, ,
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08Nov

A Two-Step Mixed Pension System: How to Reinvent Social Security with the Help of Notional Accounts and Term Annuities

By Inmaculada Domínguez-Fabián,Pierre Devolder, Francisco del Olmo García, Jose A Herce The change in economic and sociodemographic reality, characterized by a continuous increase in longevity, the consequences of the economic crisis, and the lack of adequate adjustments of social security retirement pension systems everywhere, entails risks for workers and the social security systems themselves. Many reforms of public pension systems have been carried out in recent years, based on modifying system parameters and structural changes. Some reforms aim at...

November 8, 2019
Articles, Investing, Pension design, Savings, ,
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04Nov

Behind the Success of Dominated Personal Pension Plans: Sales Force and Financial Literacy Factors

By Giuseppe Marotta (Department of Economics Marco Biagi and CEFIN) The revealed preference for dominated insurance-based personal pension plans in Italy is a decade-long puzzle. I surmise that a motivation from the supply side is a sales force factor deriving from the geographical distribution of financial providers, including the countrywide network of the state controlled Post Office. I provide supporting evidence using three biennial waves of the Bank of Italy’s survey on household finances from 2010 to 2014. The time...

November 4, 2019
Articles, Savings,
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04Nov

Evidence on Usage Behavior and Future Adoption Intention of Fintechs and Digital Finance Solutions

By Johannes M. Gerlach (Chair of Financial Services, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Heinrich-Heine-University) & Julia K. T. Lutz (Chair of Financial Services, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Heinrich-Heine University) Financial Technology Companies are gaining popularity and becoming more relevant within financial services industries worldwide. This growth can be encouraged by the EY FinTech Adoption Index, which indicates a global average FinTech Adoption of 33.0% in 2017. With regard to Financial Technology Companies and Digital Finance Solutions, this...

November 4, 2019
Articles, Investing, Savings, ,
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04Nov

Stewardship in the UK – The 2019 Draft Stewardship Code in Context

By Eva Micheler (London School of Economics - Law Department) The article interrogates the idea of creating a market for stewardship and identifies obstacles that stand in the way of such a market. In particular tax relief for pension investments deprives pension investors from an incentive to monitor investment and demand stewardship activity by their service providers. By granting tax relief the government has become a financial contributor to and a stakeholder in the financial services industry that services pensions....

November 4, 2019
Articles, Investment, Regulation, Supervision, , ,
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October 2019
28Oct

El antiguo modelo de pensiones VS el modelo de Cuentas Individuales

El anterior modelo de pensiones en México era uno en el que se descontaba a los trabajadores una parte de sus salarios para que, al cabo de algunos años el gobierno les pagara una pensión por el resto de sus días, una pensión que incluso llegaba a alcanzar el 100% de lo que ganaban en sus últimos años de trabajo. Una belleza, ¿no? Es muy claro que mucha gente se inconformó cuando el modelo de pensiones cambió a otro en...

October 28, 2019
Articles
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25Oct

Measuring Household Wealth in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics: The Role of Retirement Assets

By Daniel Cooper, Karen E. Dynan, Hannah Rhodenhiser While the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) has much to offer researchers studying household behavior, one limitation is that its summary measure of wealth is not as broad as those of other commonly used surveys, such as the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), because it does not include the value of defined-contribution (DC) pensions. This paper describes the pension data available in the PSID and shows how they can be...

October 25, 2019
Articles, Investment, Savings, ,
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25Oct

Social Pensions and Market Values: A Conflict?

By Quentin Detienne, Elmar Schmidt Social occupational pension schemes, i.e. compulsory pension schemes that are the result of collective bargaining, fulfil an important social function. At the same time, they seem to conflict with some fundamental single market tenets, such as the European Union (EU) Single Market’s four fundamental freedoms and competition law principles. In this respect, occupational pension schemes in the Member States seem to embody the inherent tensions contained within the EU’s social market economy: a clash...

October 25, 2019
Articles, Pension design, Sustainability, ,
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