February 2017

The German Social Market in the World of Global Finance: Pension Investment Management and the Limits of Consensual Decision Making

By Gordon L. Clark, Daniel Mansfield & Adam Tickell In a previous paper we emphasised the changing national and international accounting standards used to measure net pension liability. Beginning with the implications of this analysis for the financing of German employer-sponsored pensions, in this paper we focus upon the internal management of corporate pension assets and liabilities. Two issues drive the analysis. One has to do with the emerging coalescence of interests joining corporate management and shareholders in relation to the management...

The Rise of Pension Fund Capitalism in Europe: An Unseen Revolution?

By Adam Dixon In recent years European countries have begun to reform their pension systems favouring funded to pay-as-you-go (PAYG) social security systems and supporting the creation of more 2nd and 3rd pillar funded retirement schemes. Though funded pensions remain small in most European countries, they are growing significantly and may limit the persistence of strong 'varieties of capitalism' by providing an endogenous source of change to economic organisation and corporate governance. To explore this scenario this article examines recent...

The Embedded Firm: Corporate Governance, Labor, and Finance Capitalism

By Peer C. Zumbansen & Cynthia A. Williams This paper constitutes the introduction to an edited collection, THE EMBEDDED FIRM: LABOR, CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND FINANCE CAPITALISM (Cambridge University Press, 2011). This book brings together contributions from law, economics, sociology and politics in order to evaluate the effects of the shift to shareholder primacy in both the United States and the United Kingdom, in the context of an increasingly financialized economy. Contributors include Ruth Aguilera, William Allen, Harry Arthurs, Blanaid Clark,...

January 2017

Trusts No More: Rethinking the Regulation of Retirement Savings in the United States

By Natalya Shnitser - The regulation of private and public pension plans in the United States begins with the premise that employer-sponsored plans resemble traditional donative, or gift, trusts. Accordingly, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) famously “imports” major principles of donative trust law for the regulation of private employer-sponsored pension plans. Statutes regulating state and local government pension plans likewise routinely invoke the structure and standards applicable to donative trusts. Judges, in turn, adjudicate by analogy...