May 2019

International Dimensions of Sustainable Management: Latest Perspectives from Corporate Governance, Responsible Finance and Csr

By Rene Schmidpeter, Nicholas Capaldi, Samuel O Idowu, Anika Sturenberg Herrera This book provides a rich collection of essays discussing and showcasing the transformation of businesses around the world towards sustainability and responsibility. Based on a framework of global theoretical approaches, it presents practical examples and cases from a variety of industries, regions and corporate functions. It also highlights the latest insights on how corporations consider sustainability in the governance of their respective organization. Furthermore, the book features...

Selfies for Portugal- An innovative Pan European Retirement Solution

By Robert C. Merton, Arun Muralidhar, Rui Seybert P Ferreira With a rapidly aging population, Portugal faces some serious pension challenges including a Social Security system which is under pressure, and pension benefits gradually approaching levels that will require individuals to supplement Social Security with private savings. In addition, Portugal has a low rate of financial literacy and hence transferring the responsibility of retirement planning to the general population runs a major risk of many individuals retiring poor. While some...

November 2018

Curious contracts : pension fund redesign for the future

By Theo P. Kocken (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) Klamer’s approach of the culture of economics is relevant and applicable to investing, because culture is an extension of rhetoric and relates to uncertainty. Uncertainty, a feeling of anxiety, is handled by culture. With culture, Klamer focusses on substantial instead of instrumental rationality, and advocates value ethics. In Klamer’s approach values and conversations are central. The values of a culture are not evident and therefore have to be interpreted. Emerging from my personal...

September 2018

Diversification Power of Real Estate Market Securities: The Role of Financial Crisis and Dividend Policy

By Metin Ilbasmis (University of Aberdeen) Marc Gronwald (University of Aberdeen; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)) Zhao Yuan Jun (Donghua University) This paper investigates dynamic conditional correlations between stock and REIT markets in both Turkey and the U.S. We use an Asymmetric DCC - GJR - GARCH model to estimate the dynamic conditional correlation at daily, weekly, and monthly frequencies. Our contribution is threefold. First, we find a that downward trend in the daily conditional correlation in...

August 2018

Financial Literacy: Empowerment in the Stock Market

By Ali Saeedi &‎ Meysam Hamedi  This book provides an overview of current issues associated to financial literacy improvement. In selecting and structuring the material to include, the primary criterion has been applicability of topics and recommendations and accuracy of trends toward better financial literacy level. Each chapter is dedicated to a particular component of financial literacy from education to capability. Throughout the book, there are many practices initiated around the world which, regardless of their superiority, are all useful initiatives...

April 2018

How a New Bond Can Greatly Improve Retirement Security

By Adam Kobor (New York University (NYU)) & Arun Muralidhar (AlphaEngine Global Investment Solutions; George Washington University) There is a growing retirement crisis and most of the focus has been on the fact that individuals are not saving enough for retirement, may not have access to pension schemes, or are financially illiterate. However, the bigger issue might be that the assets/financial products available to investors, including those that offer legal protection to plan sponsors, may not be appropriate for the typical...

February 2018

Long-Run Saving Dynamics: Evidence from Unexpected Inheritances

By Jeppe Druedahl (University of Copenhagen - Department of Economics) & Alessandro Martinello (Lund University - Department of Economics; Danish National Institute of Social Research (SFI)) We exploit inheritance episodes to provide novel causal evidence on long-run saving dynamics. For identification, we combine a panel of administrative wealth reports with the unexpected timing of sudden parental deaths. After inheritance, net worth converges towards the path established before parental death, and convergence is faster for liquid assets. Using a generalized structural...

January 2018

The Blended Retirement System

By Patrick Weinert For over a century, the military services have provided pensions to active duty members that served 20 years. On January 1, 2018, the military broke with a long tradition and instituted a Blended Retirement System (BRS). This system is designed to enable service members to take some retirement savings with them if they depart before serving 20 years on active duty. Today, many service members have the option to stay with the traditional pension or enroll in...

Simulating Pension Income Scenarios with Pencalc: An Illustration for India’s National Pension System

By Renuka Sane (Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi) & William Joseph Price (World Bank) This paper sets out initial results from a new modeling exercise for Defined Contribution (DC) pensions. It develops a package called penCalc based on the open source software language R, which is popular in the academic and modeling communities. All the coding is made freely available. The tool is illustrated for India's DC National Pension System. The aim is not to present the perfect model for...