March 2020

20Mar

Insurance against Long-Run Volatility Risk: Demand, Supply, and Pricing

By Chuck Fang Despite its importance implied in asset pricing and macroeconomic models, insurance against long-run volatility risk has received little empirical documentation regarding its demand, supply, or pricing. This paper bridges the gap. First, I show that households have directly purchased large quantities of insurance against long- run volatility risk through the minimum return guarantees available in variable annuities, a form of retail retirement and savings product offered by life insurance companies. Total net assets with such insurance...

March 20, 2020
Articles, Investment, Pension Management
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13Mar

Feverish Stock Price Reactions to COVID-19

By Stefano Ramelli, Alexander F. Wagner This paper studies how markets adjust to the sudden and rapid emergence of previously neglected risks. It does so by analyzing the stock price effects of the 2019 novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Over the first two months of 2020, the health care industry did relatively well in China, the US, and several other countries. Transportation and Energy plummeted everywhere. Within industries, US firms reliant on Chinese inputs and those with a strong export...

March 13, 2020
Articles, Investment, , ,
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February 2020

22Feb

Long-Term Investing by Pension Funds. How to Effectively Design and Implement Mandates: A Dutch Case Study

By Alfred Slager, Marcel Jeucken Pension funds are increasingly trying to embed long-term investing choices within their portfolios. Many publications focus on the rationale for long term investing; however, it remains unclear what long term investing actually is, what sets it apart from the current way of investing, and how it should add value. The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical framework for pension fund trustees aiming to bolster and implement long term investing. In doing so,...

February 22, 2020
Articles, Investment, Pension Management, ,
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15Feb

Target Date Funds and Portfolio Choice in 401(k) Plans

By Olivia S. Mitchell, Stephen P. Utkus Target date funds in corporate retirement plans grew from $5B in 2000 to $734B in 2018, partly because federal regulation sanctioned these as default investments in automatic enrollment plans. We show that adopters delegated pension investment decisions to fund managers selected by plan sponsors. Including these funds in retirement saving menus raised equity shares, boosted bond exposures, curtailed cash/company stock holdings, and reduced idiosyncratic risk. The adoption of low-cost target date funds...

February 15, 2020
Articles, Investment, Pension design, , ,
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January 2020

24Jan

Achieving Investment Excellence: A Practical Guide for Trustees of Pension Funds, Endowments and Foundations

By Kees Koedijk, Alfred Slager, Jaap van Dam Achieving Investment Excellence offers trustees and asset managers a comprehensive handbook for improving the quality of their investments. With a stated goal of substantially and sustainably improving annual returns, this book clarifies and demystifies important concepts surrounding trustee duties and responsibilities, investment strategies, analysis, evaluation and much more. Low interest rates are making the high cost of future pension payouts fraught with tension, even as the time and knowledge required to...

January 24, 2020
Books, Investment, Pension Management, ,
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24Jan

Man versus Machine: A Comparison of Robo-Analyst and Traditional Research Analyst Investment Recommendations

By Braiden Coleman, Kenneth J. Merkley, Joseph Pacelli Advances in financial technology (FinTech) have revolutionized various product offerings in the financial services industry. One area of particular interest for this technology is the production of investment recommendations. Our study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the properties of investment recommendations generated by “Robo-Analysts,” which are human-analyst-assisted computer programs conducting automated research analysis. Our results indicate that Robo-Analysts differ from traditional “human” research analysts across several dimensions. First, Robo-Analysts collectively produce...

January 24, 2020
Articles, Investment, ,
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10Jan

Sustainable Investing in Equilibrium

By: Lubos Pastor, Robert F. Stambaugh, Lucian A. Taylor We present a model of investing based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria. In equilibrium, green assets have negative alphas, whereas brown assets have positive alphas. The ESG investment industry is at its largest, and the alphas of ESG-motivated investors are at their lowest, when there is large dispersion in investors' ESG preferences. When this dispersion shrinks, so does the ESG industry, even if all investors' ESG preferences are strong....

January 10, 2020
Articles, Investment, Sustainability, ,
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03Jan

Pension Actuarial Mathematics

By Philip Martin McCaulay This 40-page publication on pension actuarial mathematics covers topics such as (I) interest and mortality, (II) cost methods, (III) amortization and contributions, and (IV) Duration and Convexity. Part I on interest and mortality includes mortality rates and survival functions, the theory of interest, commutation functions, and life annuity factors. Part II on cost methods includes the Unit Credit (UC) Cost Method, the Projected Unit Credit (PUC) Cost Method, the Entry Age Normal (EAN) Cost Method,...

January 3, 2020
Books, Investment, Pension design, Savings,
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November 2019

29Nov

The Future of Pension Plans in the EU Internal Market: Coping with Trade-Offs Between Social Rights and Capital Markets

By Nazaré da Costa Cabral, Nuno Cunha Rodrigues This edited volume takes a closer look at various European pension-plan models and the recent challenges, trends and predictions related to the design of such schemes. The contributors analyse new ideas, both from national governments and European institutions, and consider current debates on topics such as the Capital Markets Union (CMU) and the so-called ‘European Pillar of Social Rights’ – calling for a new approach to social policy at the European level...

November 29, 2019
Books, Investment, Pension design, , ,
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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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