February 2022

Assessing the Macroeconomic Impact of Structural Reforms in Ukraine
24Feb

Assessing the Macroeconomic Impact of Structural Reforms in Ukraine

By Anil Ari & Gabor Pula Ukraine’s economic performance has been anemic since the early 1990s. A major impediment to productivity growth has been low investment, held back by lack of strong and independent institutions. This paper aims to assess the major areas of institutional weakness in Ukraine and quantify the long-term growth impact of catching-up to Poland in terms of the quality of major economic institutions and market development. Our analysis identifies the legal system as the area where...

February 24, 2022
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17Feb

Global Pension Assets Study – 2022

By Thinking Ahead Institute The Global Pension Assets Study estimates global pension fund assets across 22 major pension markets (the P22). These geographies now total a record US$56.6 trillion in pension assets and account for 76% of the GDP of these economies. The study, conducted by WTW and the Thinking Ahead Institute since the 1990s, includes an analysis of the seven largest markets (the P7): Australia, Canada, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK and US comprise 92% of total pension assets, unchanged...

February 17, 2022
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Morningstar’s Annual Target-Date Strategy Landscape
03Feb

Morningstar’s Annual Target-Date Strategy Landscape

By  MorningStar The coronavirus pandemic presented the biggest challenge for target-date strategies since the financial crisis of 2008. Target-date strategies play a central role in many Americans' retirement success by often serving as the default investment option in their defined-contribution retirement plans. Although targetdate performance rebounded sharply from the first quarter’s bear market, the fallout from the economic shock continued to weigh on investor contributions throughout the year. In this report, we examine the impact of the economic uncertainty created by the pandemic on...

February 3, 2022
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January 2022
21Jan

The Effects of Credible Voluntary Disclosures: Institutional Investor Engagement and Investees’ ESG Performances

By Massimiliano Bonacchi, April Klein, Sara Longo & Giovanni Strampelli We study the effectiveness of institutional investor engagement on the ESG performance of a sample of UK firms listed in the FTSE 350 Index. To measure the quality of engagement, we exploit the introduction of the tiering classification system by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) in 2016 for signatories’ reporting under the UK Stewardship Code. Using an entropy matched difference-in-differences research design, we show that the introduction of the tiering...

January 21, 2022
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14Jan

Lean Advice for New Investors

By Jarrod Wilcox, Zvi Bodie, & Dan di Bartolomeo As defined benefit pensions have been replaced by investor-directed defined contribution plans, implementing sound investment policies for retail investors of modest means has become a problem of increasing urgency. This group comprises most of the investor population across all countries. In the U.S. it is characterized by inadequate saving, failure to take advantage of materially higher payout for delayed Social Security benefits, extensive credit card debt, and pursuit of naïve investment...

January 14, 2022
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14Jan

Conflicts and Opportunities for Pension Fiduciaries in the ESG Environment

By Susan N. Gary Acting as prudent investors, pension managers should consider financially material factors that affect the risk/return profile of funds. Material environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors may affect financial performance by identifying opportunities and risk, so it would seem prudent to consider those factors when making decisions in the best interests of plan beneficiaries. In June 2020 the Department of Labor (DOL) proposed a rule that appeared to be an attempt to curtail consideration of ESG factors....

January 14, 2022
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06Jan

The Asymmetry in Responsible Investing Preferences

By Jacquelyn Humphrey, Shimon Kogan, Jacob Sagi & Laura Starks We design an experiment to understand how social preferences affect investment decisions through stock allocations and probability assessments. The major preference channel is asymmetric in social outcomes – although negative and positive responsible investment (RI) externalities have the same magnitudes, negative externalities have greater impact on investment choices. The effect is persistent, but heterogenous. We also find asymmetries in belief formation and learning constitute a secondary channel. Overall, our results...

January 6, 2022
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December 2021
29Dec

Green Finance: A Shift Towards Sustainable Economic Growth

By Bazgha Khan & Noria Farooqui Green finance refers to the financial arrangements that are specific to the utilization for projects that are environmentally sustainable or projects that adopt the aspects of global climate change. It’s to extend the level of financial flows from banking, micro-credit, insurance and investment, the public, private and not-for-profit sectors to sustainable development priorities. United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has been working to align financial systems to the 2030 sustainable development agenda to direct financial flows...

December 29, 2021
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11Dec

Asset Allocation: Glide Path Design for Target Date Retirement Funds

By Thomas Present & Sharon Persyn In this thesis, we discuss and compare target date retirement fund strategies that have been used in recent literature. These strategies include the 100% equity, glide path, maximum drawdown, risk budget and target return strategy. We conduct sensitivity analyses in order to obtain optimal parameters for the different strategies. We first compare the strategies with rebalancing between two asset classes: equity (Russell 1000) as the risky asset and bonds (10Y US government bonds) as...

December 11, 2021
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03Dec

Socially responsible investing

By Charles Stanley Direct The human impact on the environment means changes to the way society and industry operates are necessary, while societal problems such as poverty and inequality need to be tackled. Choosing investments that take account of these issues is what we call “investing with conscience”, or socially responsible investing. Get the book here 421 views

December 3, 2021
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