February 2017

04Feb

Enforcement capacity and the impact of labor regulation : evidence from the Russian Federation

By Álvaro Gonzalez, Siddharth Sharma & Hari Subhash The impact of business regulations on firms could depend on how the regulations are enforced in practice. Exploiting variation in enforcement capacity across the Russian Federation's administrative regions, this paper examines whether the enforcement of restrictive regulations on hiring and firing workers affects how firms adjust employment during industry upswings and downswings. The analysis finds that the extent to which firms adjust employment upward during industry upswings and downward during downswings is...

February 4, 2017
Articles, Labor Market, Regulation, Supervision,
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04Feb

Public Pensions and the Promise of Shareholder Activism for the Next Frontier of Corporate Governance: Sustainable Economic Development

By David Hess In this paper, I bring together recent developments in shareholder activism, responsible investing, and "new governance" regulation, to consider the role of public pension funds as a surrogate regulator for corporate sustainable development. Although a handful of public pensions are active in issues related to sustainability, this paper provides evidence showing that the vast majority are not. These conclusions, and explanations for why this is the case, are based in part on a survey of public pension...

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

The German Social Market in the World of Global Finance: Pension Investment Management and the Limits of Consensual Decision Making

By Gordon L. Clark, Daniel Mansfield & Adam Tickell In a previous paper we emphasised the changing national and international accounting standards used to measure net pension liability. Beginning with the implications of this analysis for the financing of German employer-sponsored pensions, in this paper we focus upon the internal management of corporate pension assets and liabilities. Two issues drive the analysis. One has to do with the emerging coalescence of interests joining corporate management and shareholders in relation to the management...

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

The Rise of Pension Fund Capitalism in Europe: An Unseen Revolution?

By Adam Dixon In recent years European countries have begun to reform their pension systems favouring funded to pay-as-you-go (PAYG) social security systems and supporting the creation of more 2nd and 3rd pillar funded retirement schemes. Though funded pensions remain small in most European countries, they are growing significantly and may limit the persistence of strong 'varieties of capitalism' by providing an endogenous source of change to economic organisation and corporate governance. To explore this scenario this article examines recent...

February 4, 2017
Articles, Corporate Governance, Investing, System Sustainability, ,
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03Feb

The FinTech Opportunity

By Thomas Philippon This paper assesses the potential impact of FinTech on the finance industry, focusing on financial stability and access to services. I document first that financial services remain surprisingly expensive, which explains the emergence of new entrants. I then argue that the current regulatory approach is subject to significant political economy and coordination costs, and therefore unlikely to deliver much structural change. FinTech, on the other hand, can bring deep changes but is likely to create significant regulatory...

February 3, 2017
Articles, Labor Market, System Sustainability, ,
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January 2017

12Jan

The Power of Social Pensions

By Wei Huang & Chuanchuan Zhang - This paper examines the impacts of social pension provision among people of different ages. Utilizing the county-by-county rollout of the New Rural Pension Scheme in rural China, we find that, among the age-eligible people, the scheme provision leads to higher household income (18 percent) and food expenditure (10 percent), lower labor supply (6 percent), and better health (11-14 percent). In addition, among the age-ineligible adults, the pension scheme shifts them from farming to...

January 12, 2017
Adequacy, System Sustainability,
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