June 2024
14Jun

LGBTQ and finance

By Sanjukta Brahma, Konstantinos Gavriilidis, Vasileios Kallinterakis, Thanos Verousis & Mengyu Zhang Recent changes in workplace and corporate board diversity policies and a series of court rulings have signalled a fundamental change in the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (henceforth LGBTQ) people in the corporate world. In this paper, we survey the burgeoning literature on the role of sexual orientation in finance. Studies show that there is a positive relationship between the adoption of LGBTQ-friendly policies and...

June 14, 2024
Articles, Investment, , ,
Read more...
07Jun

A Wealth of Well-Being: A Holistic Approach to Behavioral Finance

By Meir Statman I often note that the biggest risks in life are not in the stock market. If you want real risk, I say, get married. And if you want more risk, have children. People laugh, because the point is obvious. Yet that point is regularly lost when we speak about financial well-being, neglecting life well-being. I was motivated to write my book, “A Wealth of Well-Being, by reflecting on my own financial and life well-being and those of...

June 7, 2024
Articles, Pension design, , ,
Read more...
07Jun

Early-Life Circumstances and Racial Disparities in Cognition for Older Americans: The Importance of Educational Quality and Experiences

By Zhuoer Lin, Justin Ye, Heather Allore, Thomas M. Gill & Xi Chen Given the critical role of neurocognitive development in early life, this study assesses how racial differences in early-life circumstances are collectively and individually associated with racial disparities in late-life cognition. Leveraging uniquely rich information on life history from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study for non-Hispanic White (White) and non-Hispanic Black (Black) Americans 50 years or older, we employ the Blinder-Oaxaca method to decompose racial gaps in...

June 7, 2024
Articles, System Characterization, , , ,
Read more...
07Jun

Protection of EU Consumers Vis – À – Vis Pension Products: the Dutch Case: Towards a New Regime

By Hans van Meerten The book is an extensive examination of the intersection between EU consumer protection laws and the Dutch pension system, particularly in light of the transition to a new pension regime. It contains lessons for a new EU consumer regime vs pension products. The Dutch reform is taken a a case study. The document advocates for a comprehensive review of the Dutch pension system and its alignment with EU consumer protection laws. It suggests that while the Dutch pension...

June 7, 2024
Articles, System Characterization, , ,
Read more...

May 2024
31May

Improving Pension Information: Experimental Evidence on Learning Using Online Resources

By Denise Laroze, Charles Noussair, Gabriela Fajardo, Ximena Quintanilla, Paulina Granados, Pedro Vallette & Mauricio López Tapia When planning for retirement, deciding what to do with one's pension funds is a high-stakes, one-shot decision. It is often described in technical jargon that few people understand. Not surprisingly, individuals find the pension selection process stressful. As a consequence, many pay for advice or miss out on benefits they are eligible for because of the opacity of the retirement process. We consider...

May 31, 2024
Articles, Pension design, , ,
Read more...
31May

Intergenerational risk sharing in pay-as-you-go pension schemes

By Helene Morsomme, Jennifer Alonso García & Pierre Devolder Population ageing undermines traditional social security pension systems that combine pay-as-you-go (PAYG) and defined benefits (DB). Indeed, demographic risk, if guaranteed benefits remain unaltered, will be borne entirely by workers through increases in the contribution rate. To avoid a substantial increase of the contributions and in order to maintain simultaneously the financial sustainability and the social adequacy of the public pension system, risk sharing and automatic balancing mechanisms need to be...

May 31, 2024
Articles, Pension design, , ,
Read more...
31May

Live Longer and Healthier: Impact of Pension Income for Low-Income Retirees

By Chiara Malavasi & Han Ye We estimate the effect of additional pension income on mortality outcomes by exploring the eli- gibility criteria of a German program subsidizing the pensions of low-wage workers. Using novel administrative data, we find that eligibility leads to a 2-month delay in age at death (censored at 75). Survey evidence suggests that additional pension income improves both mental and physical health. In addition, individuals feel less financially constrained and are more optimistic about their future....

May 31, 2024
Adequacy, Articles, , , ,
Read more...
17May

Female Labor Supply and Rural Pension Eligibility in Brazil

By Gaurav Khanna, Margaret Lay, Stephanie Lee & Benjamin Thompson In 1991, Brazil expanded its rural old-age pension to cover millions of previously uncovered women, conditional on work requirements.  We use a difference-in-differences approach to show that this expansion drastically increased women’s employment by nine percentage points, or 26 percent.  This increase in labor force participation occurred among women who were immediately age-eligible, and among younger cohorts that would be eligible in the future. These results illuminate the capacity of...

May 17, 2024
Articles, Labor Market, , , ,
Read more...
17May

The Incidence of Workplace Pensions: Evidence from the Uk’s Automatic Enrollment Mandate

By Rachel Scarfe, Daniel Schaefer & Tomasz Sulka We examine who bears the costs of mandated workplace pension programs, exploiting the quasi-experimental rollout of automatic enrollment in the UK. Total compensation (take-home pay plus employer contributions) increases, driven by employer contributions, while the amount of take-home pay decreases. These effects differ by employer size, with take-home pay declining to an extent in the largest firms that we can rule out a pass-through to employees of more than 47%, significantly less...

May 17, 2024
Articles, Pension design, , , , ,
Read more...
17May

How Hidden Costs Undermine Public Pensions in the US

 By Richard Ennis Public pension plans in the US incur exorbitant asset management costs. Most spend a lot and get nothing for it. High cost has hindered efforts to realize their actuarial return requirement. It has resulted in poor performance pretty much across the board. And yet, very few plans provide a full accounting of the costs they incur. Some still fail to net all their investment expenses from the returns they report. High cost is the Achilles heel of...

May 17, 2024
Articles, Pension Management, , , ,
Read more...