January 2020

10Jan

Demographic Obstacles to European Growth

By: Thomas F. Cooley, Espen Henriksen, Charlie Nusbaum Since the early 1990’s the growth rates of the four largest European economies—France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom—have slowed. This persistent slowdown suggests a low-frequency structural change is at work. A combination of longer individual life expectancies and declining fertility have led to gradually ageing populations. Demographic change affects economic growth directly through households savings and labor supply decisions and also growth indirectly through the pension systems and the need to...

January 10, 2020
Aging, Articles, Labor Market, , , ,
Read more...
09Jan

Finanzas Contemporáneas Sostenibles: Una “oportunidad verde” para los gestores de Cartera en Colombia

Por Jairo Samuel Villamil Argoti El objetivo general de este trabajo de investigación, es revisar a partir de aproximaciones clásicas de valoración de portafolio, junto a indicadores de portafolio los desempeños de un índice sostenible (Corporate Sustainability Index) vs un índice tradicional como lo es el Bovespa, para poder dar cumplimiento a los objetivos de este trabajo de investigación, se consultaron libros y revistas de investigación económica, financiera y social utilizadas en el marco teórico y estado del...

January 9, 2020
Articles, Investing, Pension design, , ,
Read more...
03Jan

The Evolution of Fintech: A New Post-Crisis Paradigm?

By Douglas W. Arner, Janos Nathan Barberis, Ross P. Buckley “FinTech”, a contraction of “Financial technology”, refers to technology enabled financial solutions. It is often seen today as the new marriage of financial services and information technology. However, the interlinkage of finance and technology has a long history and has evolved over three distinct eras, during which finance and technology have evolved together: first in the analogue context then with a process of digitalization of finance from the late...

January 3, 2020
Articles, Pension design, Savings,
Read more...
03Jan

Economics of Crisis

By Julia M. Puaschunder According to Semmler (2019), for speculations, currency and financial crises, the economic literature can be divided into three generations of models: (1) Focus on macroeconomic fundamentals (such as differences in economic growth rates, productivity and price levels, short-term interest rates as well as monetary policy actions) causing exchange rate movements. (2) Speculative forces – such as self-fulfilling expectations, which destabilize exchange rates without deterioration of fundamentals. (3) Following the theory of imperfect capital markets, self-fulfilling...

January 3, 2020
Articles, System Sustainability,
Read more...
03Jan

Impact Investing

By Brad M. Barber, Adair Morse, Ayako Yasuda We document that investors derive nonpecuniary utility from investing in dual-objective VC funds, thus sacrificing returns. Impact funds earn 4.7 percentage points (ppts) lower IRRs ex post than traditional VC funds. In random utility/willingness-to-pay (WTP) models investors accept 2.5-3.7 ppts lower IRRs ex ante for impact funds. The positive WTP result is robust to fund access rationing and investor heterogeneity in fund expected returns. Development organizations, foundations, financial institutions, public pensions,...

January 3, 2020
Articles, Investing, , , ,
Read more...

December 2019
27Dec

Realistic Expectations and Limitations to Consumer-Facing Robo-tic Advisors

By Dirk Cotton, Neville Francis We present a benchmark life-cycle simulation model (RFSM) that incorporates the financial, demographic, and mortality positions of retired households. By adjusting several features we nest a specific type of consumer-facing (generic) robo model that attempts to minimize the user's workload by imputing key inputs. We calibrate both models under robo policies using the Health and Retirement data for our benchmark model and robo-imputed data for the Generic-Robo model. Our findings indicate that retirees using...

December 27, 2019
Articles, Investing, Pension design, Savings, ,
Read more...
27Dec

The Right of Older Persons to Work and to Access the Labour Market

By Andrew C. Byrnes, Israel Issi Doron, Nena Georgantzi, Bill Mitchell, Bridget Sleap This paper was prepared as a submission to the United Nations General Assembly Open-Ended Working Group on Ageing, which is considering the desirability of the development of a new international treaty on the human rights of older persons. The paper explores issues relating to the participation of older persons in the labour market, in particular the barriers to their entry to and continued participation in paid...

December 27, 2019
Aging, Articles, Labor Market,
Read more...
27Dec

The Pan-European Pension Product Regulation: A Huge Opportunity for the Luxembourg Fund Industry

By Sebastiaan Niels Hooghiemstra Currently, there is a dynamic and ongoing improvement in life expectancies that is not accounted for in pension systems designed to provide financial security in retirement. All over Europe, there are currently employment-based (2nd pillar) pension funds and first pillar pay-as-you-go (PAYG) state pensions systems that are facing huge funding deficits as a result of that. Recently both the EU parliament and the EU Council took their stance on the introduction of an European legal...

December 27, 2019
Articles, Pension design, Pension Management, , ,
Read more...
20Dec

Is Informality Good for Business? The Impacts of IDP Inflows on Formal Firms

By Sandra Rozo, Hernan Winkler This paper examines the effects of large inflows of internally displaced persons (IDP), who are primarily absorbed by the informal sector, on the behavior of formal manufacturing firms in Colombia. To identify causal effects, the analysis employs annual, firm-level panel data between 1995 and 2010 and exploits that when conflict intensifies, forcefully displaced individuals tend to migrate to municipalities where people from their origin locations settled earlier. The paper finds that large inflows of...

December 20, 2019
Articles, Labor Market, , ,
Read more...
20Dec

State Pension Funds Reduce Assumed Rates of Return

State and local public employee retirement systems in the United States manage over $4.3 trillion in public pension fund investments, with returns on these assets accounting for more than 60 cents of every dollar available to pay promised benefits. About three-quarters of these assets are held in what are often called risky assets—stocks and alternative investments, including private equities, hedge funds, real estate, and commodities.1 These investments offer potentially higher long-term returns, but their values fluctuate with ups and...

December 20, 2019
Articles, Pension design, , , ,
Read more...