Download or read book Personal Pension Plans and Stock Market Volatility written by Max Alier and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2000 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal pension plans transfer investment risk to participating workers and expose them to the volatility of financial returns. Simple financial strategies lower the volatility of replacement rates but at a significant cost in terms of lower replacement rates. The purchase of valuable annuities reduces the dispersion of replacement rates across generations without lowering their level.
Download or read book Personal Pension Plans and Stock Market Volatility written by Dimitri Vittas and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal pension plans transfer investment risk to participating workers and expose them to the volatility of financial returns. Simple financial strategies lower the volatility of replacement rates but at a significant cost in terms of lower replacement rates. The purchase of variable annuities reduces the dispersion of replacement rates across generations without lowering their level.One of the strongest objections to personal pension plans is that they transfer investment risk to individual workers, who are then exposed to the vagaries of equity and bond markets. Using historical U.S. data, Alier and Vittas investigate the impact of the volatility of investment returns on replacement rates in the context of personal pension plans.They find large fluctuations in replacement rates across different cohorts of workers, if undiversified portfolios are used.They then explore a number of simple financial strategies for coping with this problem, including:- Portfolio diversification.- A late, gradual shift to bonds.- A gradual purchase of nominal or real annuities.- A purchase of variable annuities.The first three strategies lower the volatility of replacement rates, but at a significant cost in terms of lower replacement rates. The purchase of variable annuities reduces the dispersion of replacement rates across generations without lowering their level - because of the persistence of the equity premium and the fact that the volatility of equity returns is lower, the longer the holding period.Sophisticated financial engineering promises more efficient solutions to this problem, but it may not be feasible to apply it in developing countries (or in developing financial markets). Neither Alier and Vittas's approach nor the more sophisticated financial engineering solutions would be able to deal effectively with persistent deviations of investment returns from long trends. But the authors' findings suggest that overconcern about the impact on replacement rates of short-term volatility in stock markets may not be warranted.This paper - a product of Finance, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study pension systems and the impact of pension reform. The authors may be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected].
Download or read book Personal Pension Plans and Stock Market Volatility written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Pension Strategy written by Andrew Springett and published by Insomniac Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies show that 90% of institutional investors, such as pension funds, reach their investment goals. However, only 11% of individual investors achieve their goals. Over the past twenty years we have witnessed both the greatest bull market of all time and one of the most devastating crashes in history. During this period, pension funds posted returns of more than double those realized by individual investors. At the same time, the institutional pensions were exposed to less than half of the risk and volatility that individual investors were forced to endure.
Download or read book Retirement Provision in Scary Markets written by Hazel Bateman and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past few decades have witnessed a global move towards private provision for retirement through individual defined contribution pensions at the expense of publicly provided and employer-sponsored defined benefit pensions. As a consequence, workers and retirees are becoming increasingly exposed to uncertainties in financial, labour and economic markets. The contributors to this book analyse the implications for retirement income policy, workers and retirees in view of the current climate of heightened exposure to scary markets. The implications of a broad range of scary market scenarios are presented, and novel solutions prescribed. Retirement incomes across a number of countries including the US, the UK, Japan and Australia are explored, and uncertainties examined include: extreme stock price volatility; discontinuous labour market participation; and regulatory failure and macroeconomic instability. Concluding with the observation that regulatory reforms could be almost as scary as the underlying macroeconomic conditions, this book will prove a fascinating read for scholars, researchers, practitioners and policymakers with an interest in pensions and pension policy, financial economics and public sector economics.
Download or read book Invest Like an Institution written by Michael C. Schlachter and published by Apress. This book was released on 2013-09-16 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All too often, when investors go in search of investment advice, they are met with television personalities and so-called investment “gurus” who do little more than push the latest and greatest scheme to retire rich. Your retirement funds—in the form of IRAs, 401(k)s, SEP or Simple IRAs, and other plans you can direct to some degree—are, however, far too precious to bet on the latest scheme, trend, or tip you heard at a party. In Invest Like an Institution: Professional Strategies for Funding a Successful Retirement, Michael Schlachter provides individual investors with the tools they need to build a portfolio that not only protects their wealth but helps it grow for the long term. Result? A comfortable retirement in which you can pursue your dreams and check “bucket list” items off at your leisure. As an advisor to large pension funds and endowments, Michael Schlachter counts among his clients the elite. Institutional investors like the retirement systems of states and major companies, as well as the largest university endowments, are among the few that consistently outperform the market. Sure, average retail investors can't make the same types of private deals in real estate, private equity, or hedge funds that institutional investors use to reap large returns or offset market volatility. But as this book demonstrates, you can replicate in your own portfolio the very same diversification strategies that large funds employ to achieve long-term gains. To that end, Invest Like an Institution shows how to build a portfolio that is every bit as diversified and risk-controlled as a multi-billion-dollar institutional fund—and a portfolio more likely to result in a happy, financially secure retirement. Filled with easy-to-implement guidelines that will put you on the path to financial success without encouraging you to chase trends, take on unneeded risks, or spend unnecessary fees, Invest Like an Institution analyzes: Why asset allocation and consistent retirement contributions are the single largest determinant of your success or failure The merits of a global portfolio versus those of a home country–biased portfolio How newer investment strategies are used by institutional investors to supplement a well-diversified portfolio Why fixed income investments are not as safe as most investors think and how to understand their role in your portfolio The best alternative asset classes that are readily available to individual investors Invest Like an Institution will help ensure that your investments are positioned for long-term growth under any market conditions. Follow its advice, and you can better achieve a prime goal we all share: retiring with a substantial nest egg.
Download or read book Aging and the Macroeconomy written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-01-10 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States is in the midst of a major demographic shift. In the coming decades, people aged 65 and over will make up an increasingly large percentage of the population: The ratio of people aged 65+ to people aged 20-64 will rise by 80%. This shift is happening for two reasons: people are living longer, and many couples are choosing to have fewer children and to have those children somewhat later in life. The resulting demographic shift will present the nation with economic challenges, both to absorb the costs and to leverage the benefits of an aging population. Aging and the Macroeconomy: Long-Term Implications of an Older Population presents the fundamental factors driving the aging of the U.S. population, as well as its societal implications and likely long-term macroeconomic effects in a global context. The report finds that, while population aging does not pose an insurmountable challenge to the nation, it is imperative that sensible policies are implemented soon to allow companies and households to respond. It offers four practical approaches for preparing resources to support the future consumption of households and for adapting to the new economic landscape.
Download or read book Strategic Asset Allocation written by John Y. Campbell and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2002-01-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academic finance has had a remarkable impact on many financial services. Yet long-term investors have received curiously little guidance from academic financial economists. Mean-variance analysis, developed almost fifty years ago, has provided a basic paradigm for portfolio choice. This approach usefully emphasizes the ability of diversification to reduce risk, but it ignores several critically important factors. Most notably, the analysis is static; it assumes that investors care only about risks to wealth one period ahead. However, many investors—-both individuals and institutions such as charitable foundations or universities—-seek to finance a stream of consumption over a long lifetime. In addition, mean-variance analysis treats financial wealth in isolation from income. Long-term investors typically receive a stream of income and use it, along with financial wealth, to support their consumption. At the theoretical level, it is well understood that the solution to a long-term portfolio choice problem can be very different from the solution to a short-term problem. Long-term investors care about intertemporal shocks to investment opportunities and labor income as well as shocks to wealth itself, and they may use financial assets to hedge their intertemporal risks. This should be important in practice because there is a great deal of empirical evidence that investment opportunities—-both interest rates and risk premia on bonds and stocks—-vary through time. Yet this insight has had little influence on investment practice because it is hard to solve for optimal portfolios in intertemporal models. This book seeks to develop the intertemporal approach into an empirical paradigm that can compete with the standard mean-variance analysis. The book shows that long-term inflation-indexed bonds are the riskless asset for long-term investors, it explains the conditions under which stocks are safer assets for long-term than for short-term investors, and it shows how labor income influences portfolio choice. These results shed new light on the rules of thumb used by financial planners. The book explains recent advances in both analytical and numerical methods, and shows how they can be used to understand the portfolio choice problems of long-term investors.
Download or read book Studies on the Management of Corporate Pension Funds and Stock Market Volatility written by Young Sun Ghaug and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Evaluating the Financial Performance of Pension Funds written by Richard Hinz and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2010-01-14 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Countries around the world are increasingly relying on individual pension savings accounts to provide income in old age for their citizens. Although these funds have now been in place for several decades, their performance is usually measured using methods that are not meaningful in relation to this long-term objective. The recent global financial crisis has highlighted the need to develop better performance evaluation methods that are consistent with the retirement income objective of pension funds. Compiling research derived from a partnership among the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and three private partners, 'Evaluating the Financial Performance of Pension Funds' discusses the theoretical basis and key implementation issues related to the design of performance benchmarks based on life-cycle savings and investment principles. The book begins with an evaluation of the financial performance of funded pension systems using the standard mean variance framework. It then provides a discussion of the limitations inherent to applying these methods to pension funds and outlines the many other issues that should be addressed in developing more useful and meaningful performance measures through the formulation of pension-specific benchmark portfolios. Practical implementation issues are addressed through empirical examples of how such benchmarks could be developed. The book concludes with commentary and observations from several noted pension experts about the need for a new approach to performance measurement and the impact of the recent global financial crisis on pension funds.
Download or read book OECD Pensions Outlook 2020 written by Oecd and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2020 edition of the OECD Pensions Outlook examines a series of policy options to help governments improve the sustainability and resilience of pension systems. It considers how to ensure that policy makers balance the trade-off between the short-term and long-term consequences of policy responses to COVID-19; how to determine and assess the adequacy of retirement income; how funded pension arrangements can support individuals in non-standard forms of work to save for retirement; how to select default investment strategies; how to address the potential negative consequences from frequent switching of investment strategies; and, how retirement income arrangements can share both the investment and longevity risks among different stakeholders in a sustainable manner. This edition also discusses how governments can communicate in a way that helps people choose their optimal investment strategies.
Download or read book Assessing Chile s Pension System Challenges and Reform Options written by Samuel Pienknagura and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-09-10 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chile’s pension system came under close scrutiny in recent years. This paper takes stock of the adequacy of the system and highlights its challenges. Chile’s defined contribution system was quite influential when introduced, and was taken as an example by other countries. However, it is now delivering low replacement rates relative to OECD peers, as its parameters did not adapt over time to changing demographics and global returns, while informality persists in the labor market. In the absence of reforms, the system’s inability to deliver adequate outcomes for a large share of participants will continue to magnify, as demographic trends and low global interest rates will continue to reduce replacement rates. In addition, recent legislation allowing for pension savings withdrawals to counter the effects from the COVID-19 pandemic, is projected to further reduce replacement rates and increase fiscal costs. A substantial improvement in replacement rates is feasible, via a reform that raises contribution rates and the retirement age, coupled with policies that increases workers’ contribution density.
Download or read book Institutional Investors and Securities Markets written by Dimitri Vittas and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1998 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: December 1998 The answer varies by type of investor. Pension funds and insurance companies should be promoted for their own sake, but mutual funds are unlikely to thrive without well-regulated securities markets. Anglo-American experience suggests that institutional investors can provide a strong stimulus to market development. This takes time and requires both critical mass and conducive regulations. Institutional investors comprise pension funds, insurance companies, and mutual funds. Should a country promote their creation if it lacks well-developed securities markets? The answer to this question, says Vittas, varies by type of investor. He argues that private pension funds and insurance companies are promoted for their own sake and for their potential economic, fiscal, and financial benefits, whether or not a country already has well-developed securities markets. Mutual funds, by contrast, are unlikely to thrive without strong and well-regulated securities markets. A limited supply of financial instruments should not be a major obstacle to the creation of pension funds and insurance companies. Such institutions build up their financial resources gradually but steadily, giving reforming governments ample time to develop securities markets. More important than the prior development of securities markets is a strong and lasting political commitment to holistic reform: macroeconomic, fiscal, banking, and capital market reform, as well as pension and insurance reform. Institutional investors need to attain critical mass and to be supported by conducive regulations. Vittas reviews Anglo-American experience since the 1940s. This shows that institutional investors can serve as a countervailing force to commercial and investment banks, helping to stimulate financial innovation, modernize capital markets, enhance transparency and disclosure, strengthen corporate governance, and improve financial regulation. This paper-a product of Finance, Development Research Group-was presented at the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, Latin America and the Caribbean, June 18-30, 1998, in San Salvador. The author may be contacted at [email protected].
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Pensions and Retirement Income written by Gordon L. Clark and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2006-07-20 with total page 954 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook draws on research from a range of academic disciplines to reflect on the implications for provisions of pension and retirement income of demographic ageing. it reviews the latest research, policy related tools, analytical methods and techniques and major theoretical frameworks.
Download or read book Pension Reform and Capital Market Development written by Dimitri Vittas and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2000 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Private pension funds are neither necessary nor sufficient for capital market development. But if they are subject to conducive regulations, adopt optimizing policies, and operate in a pluralistic structure, they can have a large impact on capital market modernization and development once they reach a critical mass.
Download or read book Economic Challenges of Pension Systems written by Marta Peris-Ortiz and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-03-20 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the major economic challenges associated with the sustainability of public pensions, specifically demographic change, labor-market relations, and risk sharing. The issue of public pensions occupies the political and economic agendas of many major governments in the world. International organizations such as the World Bank and the OECD warn that the economic changes driven by an aging society negatively affects the sustainability of pension systems. This book analyzes different global public pension systems to offer policies, methods and tools for sustainable public pensions. Real case studies from France, Sweden, Latin America, Algeria, USA and Mexico are featured.
Download or read book Behavioral Public Finance written by Edward J. McCaffery and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2006-01-23 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Behavioral economics questions the basic underpinnings of economic theory, showing that people often do not act consistently in their own self-interest when making economic decisions. While these findings have important theoretical implications, they also provide a new lens for examining public policies, such as taxation, public spending, and the provision of adequate pensions. How can people be encouraged to save adequately for retirement when evidence shows that they tend to spend their money as soon as they can? Would closer monitoring of income tax returns lead to more honest taxpayers or a more distrustful, uncooperative citizenry? Behavioral Public Finance, edited by Edward McCaffery and Joel Slemrod, applies the principles of behavioral economics to government's role in constructing economic and social policies of these kinds and suggests that programs crafted with rational participants in mind may require redesign. Behavioral Public Finance looks at several facets of economic life and asks how behavioral research can increase public welfare. Deborah A. Small, George Loewenstein, and Jeff Strnad note that public support for a tax often depends not only on who bears its burdens, but also on how the tax is framed. For example, people tend to prefer corporate taxes over sales taxes, even though the cost of both is eventually extracted from the consumer. James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian, and Andrew Metrick assess the impact of several different features of 401(k) plans on employee savings behavior. They find that when employees are automatically enrolled in a retirement savings plan, they overwhelmingly accept the status quo and continue participating, while employees without automatic enrollment typically take over a year to join the saving plan. Behavioral Public Finance also looks at taxpayer compliance. While the classic economic model suggests that the low rate of IRS audits means far fewer people should voluntarily pay their taxes than actually do, John Cullis, Philip Jones, and Alan Lewis present new research showing that many people do not underreport their incomes even when the probability of getting caught is a mere one percent. Human beings are not always rational, utility-maximizing economic agents. Behavioral economics has shown how human behavior departs from the assumptions made by generations of economists. Now, Behavioral Public Finance brings the insights of behavioral economics to analysis of policies that affect us all.
