February 2021
12Feb

Income and Saving Responses to Tax Incentives for Private Retirement Savings

By Marc K. Chan, Todd Morris, Cain Polidano, Ha Vu Many governments offer tax concessions for retirement contributions to boost retirement savings and alleviate the fiscal pressures of population aging. In this paper, we show that income responses are crucial for understanding these impacts. Using tax-register data, we study large changes in caps on tax-favored contributions to individual retirement accounts in Australia. We find that higher caps increase retirement contributions considerably, with around two-thirds of this response financed by increases...

February 12, 2021
Articles, Savings, ,
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12Feb

Late-Career Unemployment Shocks, Pension Outcomes and Unemployment Insurance

By Samir Elsadek Mahmoudi In response to unemployment shocks, older workers deplete their 401(k)s, particularly after the waiving of the early withdrawal penalty on unemployment-motivated withdrawals at age 55. This paper shows that Unemployment Insurance (UI) keeps older workers from depleting their 401(k) assets following job losses. UI also incentivizes older unemployed workers to delay claiming their Social Security (SS) benefits beyond the earliest age of eligibility, 62. Overall, UI enhances the retirement income of the individuals having a history...

February 12, 2021
Articles, Pension design,
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09Feb

Debt for Climate: Green Bonds and Other Instruments

By Paul Rose This chapter, prepared for the Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Climate Finance and Investment Law (2020, Michael Mehling and Harro van Asselt (eds.)), examines the rise of green bonds, climate bonds, and other green financial instruments. Although climate finance has enjoyed positive momentum in recent years, this momentum is at risk—with the possibility of reversal—if climate markets fail to provide competitive risk-adjusted returns. For climate finance to compete effectively, governments, issuers, and investors must resolve a...

February 9, 2021
Articles, Investing, , ,
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09Feb

Counter-Hegemonic Finance: The Gamestop Short Squeeze

By Usman W. Chohan The events that surrounded the short squeeze of various downtrodden stocks such as Gamestop (GME) allude to a counter-hegemonic financial effort, with small-scale investors pooling in to sabotage the short-positions of large Wall Street players such as hedge funds. This paper frames these events in terms of public reprisal for the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and public contempt for insular financial private interest. The discussion suggests that such people-power initiatives, abetted by powerful elite...

February 9, 2021
Articles, Investing, ,
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09Feb

Portfolio Management for Insurers and Pension Funds and COVID-19: Targeting Volatility for Equity, Balanced and Target-Date Funds with Leverage Constraints 2

By Bao Huy Doan , Jonathan J. Reeves , Michael Sherris Insurers and pension funds face the challenges of historically low interest rates and volatility in equity markets, that have been accentuated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent advances in equity portfolio management with a target volatility have been shown to deliver improved on average risk adjusted return, after transaction costs. This paper studies these targeted volatility portfolios in applications to equity, balanced and target-date funds with varying constraints...

February 9, 2021
Articles, Investing, Pension Management, , ,
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05Feb

Debt for Climate: Green Bonds and Other Instruments

By Paul Rose This chapter, prepared for the Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Climate Finance and Investment Law (2020, Michael Mehling and Harro van Asselt (eds.)), examines the rise of green bonds, climate bonds, and other green financial instruments. Although climate finance has enjoyed positive momentum in recent years, this momentum is at risk—with the possibility of reversal—if climate markets fail to provide competitive risk-adjusted returns. For climate finance to compete effectively, governments, issuers, and investors must resolve a...

February 5, 2021
Articles, Investing, , ,
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05Feb

Counter-Hegemonic Finance: The Gamestop Short Squeeze

By Usman W. Chohan The events that surrounded the short squeeze of various downtrodden stocks such as Gamestop (GME) allude to a counter-hegemonic financial effort, with small-scale investors pooling in to sabotage the short-positions of large Wall Street players such as hedge funds. This paper frames these events in terms of public reprisal for the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and public contempt for insular financial private interest. The discussion suggests that such people-power initiatives, abetted by powerful elite...

February 5, 2021
Articles, Investing, ,
Read more...
05Feb

Portfolio Management for Insurers and Pension Funds and COVID-19: Targeting Volatility for Equity, Balanced and Target-Date Funds with Leverage Constraints

By Bao Huy Doan, Jonathan J. Reeves, Michael Sherris Insurers and pension funds face the challenges of historically low interest rates and volatility in equity markets, that have been accentuated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent advances in equity portfolio management with a target volatility have been shown to deliver improved on average risk adjusted return, after transaction costs. This paper studies these targeted volatility portfolios in applications to equity, balanced and target-date funds with varying constraints on leverage....

February 5, 2021
Articles, Investing, Pension Management, , ,
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January 2021

29Jan

Unearned Income and Labor Supply: Evidence from Survivor Pensions in Austria

By René Böheim, Michael Topf We study the effect of lower unearned income on labor supply. To identify the causal effect of an unexpected reduction in unearned income, we exploit a policy reform that lowered survivor pensions in Austria. Men widowed after the survivor pension reform received an approximately 34% lower survivor pension than men widowed before the reform. We follow the employment history of both groups for 150 months and estimate the reform’s effect on labor supply using...

January 29, 2021
Articles, Pension design, , , ,
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29Jan

Robots and Labor in the Service Sector: Evidence from Nursing Homes

By Karen Eggleston, Yong Suk Lee, Toshiaki Iizuka In one of the first studies of service sector robotics using establishment-level data, we study the impact of robots on staffing in Japanese nursing homes, using geographic variation in robot subsidies as an instrumental variable. We find that robot adoption increases employment by augmenting the number of care workers and nurses on flexible employment contracts, and decreases difficulty in staff retention. Robot adoption also reduces the monthly wages of regular nurses,...

January 29, 2021
Articles, Labor Market, ,
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