February 2017

04Feb

Cash Balance Pension Plan Conversions and the New Economy

By Julia Coronado & Phillip Copeland Many firms that sponsor traditional defined benefit pensions have converted their plans to cash balance plans in the last ten years. Cash balance plans combine features of defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) plans, and yet their introduction has proven considerably more controversial than has the increasing popularity of DC plans. The goal of this study is to estimate a hierarchy of the influences on the decision of a firm to convert its...

February 4, 2017
Articles, Investing, Pension design,
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04Feb

Did Pension Plan Accounting Contribute to a Stock Market Bubble?

By Julia Coronado & Steven Sharpe During the 1990s, the asset portfolios of defined benefit (DB) pension plans ballooned with the booming stock market. Due to current accounting guidelines, the robust growth in pension assets resulted in a stealthy but substantial boost to the profits of sponsoring corporations. This study assesses the extent to which equity investors were fooled by pension accounting. First, we test whether stock prices reflected the fair market value of sponsoring firms’ net pension assets reported...

February 4, 2017
Articles, Corporate Governance, Investing, Regulation
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04Feb

The 'Crisis' in Defined Benefit Corporate Pension Liabilities: Current Solutions and Future Prospects

By Gordon L. Clark & Ashby H. B. Monk Once an integral component of company-sponsored compensation schemes in many western economies, private defined benefit (DB) pensions are in decline. For many, DB schemes (and their related health care liabilities, depending on the jurisdiction) have hobbled the financial well-being of plan sponsors and even whole sectors of industry. If a constraint on shareholder value in the short-term, these schemes threaten long-term corporate survival in the emerging global economy. While there remains considerable debate...

February 4, 2017
Articles, Investing, Labor Market, ,
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04Feb

The ‘Crisis’ in Defined Benefit Corporate Pension Liabilities: Current Solutions and Future Prospects

By Gordon L. Clark & Ashby H. B. Monk Once an integral component of company-sponsored compensation schemes in many western economies, private defined benefit (DB) pensions are in decline. For many, DB schemes (and their related health care liabilities, depending on the jurisdiction) have hobbled the financial well-being of plan sponsors and even whole sectors of industry. If a constraint on shareholder value in the short-term, these schemes threaten long-term corporate survival in the emerging global economy. While there remains considerable debate...

February 4, 2017
Articles, Investing, Labor Market, ,
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04Feb

Initiate Deficits to Strengthen Public Finances: The Role of Private Pensions

By Ales Berk, Dragan Jovanovic & Joze Sambt In this paper we use our comprehensive pension system model calibrated to the real demographic, employment and retirement data, measure transition costs of implementing mandatory private second-pillar into the pension landscape and consider fiscal sustainability of pension system. We report sensitivity to the most relevant parameters both within a second-pillar and a pay-as-you-go, and argue that fiscal sustainability and improved (higher) accrual rates are not incompatible policy goals if only pension reform...

February 4, 2017
Articles, Investing, Regulation,
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04Feb

Building Long-Term Portfolio Benchmarks for Pension Funds in Emerging Economies

By Heinz P. Rudolph & Jorge Sabat The movement from a defined benefit to a defined contribution pension system has important implications in the area of portfolio allocation. While the focus of defined benefit pension funds is essentially in the long term, some defined contribution funds might have incentives to invest with shorter-term horizons. The case of open pension funds, such as the ones in several countries in Latin America and Central and Eastern European countries, shows that competition on...

February 4, 2017
Articles, Investing
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04Feb

Pension Fund Reform and European Financial Markets

By E. Phillip Davis Pension reform is widely seen as essential in order to defuse the difficulties EU governments would otherwise face in respect of their social security pension systems in a context of population ageing. Particularly when such reform involves funding of future pensions, it may have radical implications for European financial markets, entailing important changes in the demand for financial assets by the private sector and qualitative developments in capital markets and banking which may impinge on banks...

February 4, 2017
Articles, Investing, Regulation,
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04Feb

Corporate Governance: Challenges For Latin America

By Fernando Lefort & Eduardo Walker Corporate Governance relates to mechanisms through which providers of resources to the firm get their share of resources in return. Adequate governance practices help develop capital markets and assist market forces in attaining efficient contracts. Convincing evidence exists that well developed capital markets have an important impact on economic performance, growth and productivity. Our motivation for studying the corporate governance challenges faced by Latin America partly arises from a conviction that academic research on...

February 4, 2017
Articles, Corporate Governance, Investing,
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04Feb

The Effects Of Economic And Political Shocks On Corporate Governance Systems In Chile

By Fernando Lefort & Eduardo Walker We present a synthesis of the major political and economic events that have influenced the development of laws and capital markets in Chile, and their impact on the evolution of Chilean conglomerates through time. We find that laws and regulations in Chile have been extremely «path dependent», corresponding in most cases to reactions to crises or major events, and argue that these events have persistently shaped corporate governance systems in Chile. We identify the...

February 4, 2017
Articles, Corporate Governance, Investing,
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04Feb

Changes in Funding Patterns by Latin American Banking Systems: How Large? How Risky? – Working Paper 420

By Liliana Rojas-Suarez & José María Serena This paper investigates the shifts in Latin American banks’ funding patterns in the post-global financial crisis period. To this end, we introduce a new measure of exposure of local banking systems to international debt markets that we term: International Debt Issuances by Locally Supervised Institutions. In contrast to well-known BIS measures, our new metric includes all entities that fall under the supervisory purview of the local authority. This is especially important in Latin...

February 4, 2017
Articles, Investing, ,
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