December 2025

Lost Pensions, Lost Pensioners: Is a National Registry of Pension Plans the Answer?

By David P. Blake & John A. Turner In the United States and other countries, many retirees face great difficulties in tracing their former employers in order to apply for a pension to which they are entitled. At the same time, pension plans have trouble tracking down pensioners with whom they have lost contact. The problem of lost pensions and lost pensioners was also prevalent in the United Kingdom, but in 1991 the British government established a national registry of...

September 2025

Aligning your pension scheme with the Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures recommendations

By Department for Work and Pensions This guide aims to help trustees evaluate the way in which climate-related risks and opportunities may affect their strategies. Trustees should consider how different investments and strategies could be impacted by transition and physical risks, at an asset class, sector and firm level where appropriate. Schemes should set out what risks and opportunities they consider to be relevant or material to them over the short/medium/long term time horizons for their scheme. They should use scenario analysis...

Retirement income market data 2024/25

By Financial Conduct Authority We have collected data on the retirement income market since April 2015. The data helps us monitor developments. For example, it gives us insight into the actions consumers take the first time they access a pension pot. Previously published data up to March 2018 is also included in separate tables. The data for these periods was initially drawn from a representative sample. We started collecting data from all regulated firms that provide retirement income products from 1 April...

The Need For Regulation Of Private Equity: Evidence From De-Spac Transactions

By Sureyya Burcu Avci, Cindy A. Schipani & H. Nejat Seyhun In this Article, we examine whether regulation is needed to protect investors in private equity. We do this by analyzing the performance of de-SPAC transactions that solicited private investment. These private investments in public equity are known as PIPEs. Because PIPE returns are publicly available, we are empirically able to determine whether the limited PIPE investors are getting a fair deal in these investments. We find that de-SPAC investors...

August 2025

Pensions Investment Review: Final Report

By HM Treasury, Department for Work and Pensions & Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government The Final Report sets out the conclusions of the Pensions Investment Review, launched in July 2024.  Legislation to implement the reforms will form part of the forthcoming Pension Schemes Bill. The reforms will deliver a major consolidation in the Defined Contribution (DC) workplace pensions market. This will enable more investment in productive assets and greater potential returns for members of DC workplace schemes. A reserve power will also...

Enhancing Financial Regulation of Green Infrastructure Investment

By Andreas (Andy) Jobst The paper examines the critical need for enhanced financial regulation to support green infrastructure investment as climate action becomes increasingly pressing. It points out that infrastructure is responsible for more than two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions and that climate-related disasters lead to annual losses of nearly one percent of GDP, with poorer countries being disproportionately affected. Green infrastructure plays a crucial role in reducing carbon footprints through renewable energy and low-emission transport, as well as...

June 2025

PensionsEurope’s Position Paper on the European Commission’s Omnibus Simplification Proposal

By Pension Europe PensionsEurope welcomes the European Commission (EC) initiative which aims to align crucial EU legislation concerning Sustainable Finance. PensionsEurope firmly believes that the competitiveness of the EU economy is vital, it is possible to reduce the administrative burden without undermining the EU's policy objectives regarding the green transition. However, any simplification should be carefully balanced to ensure that material sustainability information on risks, opportunities, and impacts-critical to informed investor decision-making-is preserved. Accordingly, the Omnibus package should aim to streamline...

March 2025

Public pensions reforms: financial and political sustainability

By Julián Díaz Saavedra One main reason for the unsustainability of future pensions in many European countries is a failure to adapt to very long-term demographic trends. Also, a reform to address financing issues can also be an occasion to improve pension design. Sometimes, however, such pension reforms are likely to be overturned when they lead to significant short-term losses in retirement income. We use an overlapping generations economy with incomplete insurance markets to show that, with an appropriate design,...

February 2025

Place-Based Policies of the European Union: Contrasts and Similarities to the US Experience

By Peter R. Berkowitz, Michael Storper & Max Herbertson The European place-based policy framework was established in the European Treaties and has a current budget of $60-70 billion per year. This paper identifies key features and directions for its future development with respect to three place-based problems: traditionally lagging regions; contemporary distressed (or left-behind regions), including those facing the structural challenges of the energy transition; the challenge of spreading prosperity faced with the uneven geography of technological clusters and routine technology-based manufacturing. We...

November 2024

Pension Policy Preferences: Beliefs about Others

By Carmen Sainz Villalba This paper studies the information provision and belief updating on the preference for regulation on pensions for own respondents and the preference for regulation on pensions for the population as a whole. Following the work of Sainz Villalba and Konrad (2024), we conduct a survey experiment where we provide information on own characteristics and on characteristics about individuals in other income brackets. We find that respondents who overestimate the pension coverage for low income earners are more likely to want less regulation...