January 2017

A Rare Corner of Finance Where Women Dominate

Once a year, a small group of executives who control trillions of dollars in American companies meet for lunch in Manhattan. Among the things they discuss: pushing for greater say in how companies are run. It is an elite gathering, but you will not see a single man in a suit in the room. The event, called the Women in Governance lunch, underscores a rare corner in finance where women dominate. Women hold the top positions in corporate governance at many...

IDA at 65: Heading Toward Retirement or a Fragile Lease on Life? – Working Paper 246

By Todd Moss and Benjamin Leo - As the concessionary lending window of the World Bank, the International Development Association (IDA) has provided grants and low-interest loans to the world's poorest countries for over 50 years. IDA funds projects that address many of the problems associated with slower growth in developing countries related to primary education, basic health services, clean water supply and sanitation, environmental safeguards, business-climate improvements, infrastructure, and institutional reforms. However, looking to the future, IDA's operations will likely be substantially...

The Norway Model

By David Chambers, Elroy Dimson & Antti Ilmanen - The Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global was recently ranked the largest fund on the planet. It is also highly rated for its professional, low-cost, transparent, and socially responsible approach to asset management. Investment professionals increasingly refer to Norway as a model for managing financial assets. We present and evaluate the strategies followed by the Fund, review long-term performance, and describe how it responded to the financial crisis. We conclude with some...

Individual Accounts as Social Insurance: A World Bank Perspective

By Robert HolzMann and Robert Palacios - The trend toward including individual accounts as part of the mandatory pension system continues unabated. Nine Latin American countries have introduced individual accounts (Chile, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, Bolivia, Mexico, El Salvador and Nicaragua) and several more are preparing to do so (Ecuador, Dominican Republic) A similar trend has emerged in Europe where the former socialist countries are taking the lead: Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Poland have already passed reform legislation and many...