Determinants of Real Estate Asset Allocations in Private and Public Pension Plans

Numerous studies have examined the factors associated with allocation of corporate and government pension-plan assets. Yet to date there has been no attempt to identify the sponsor-related conditions that affect the percentage of U.S. private and public pension-fund assets invested in real estate. The purpose of this article is to examine various asset-and liability-matching hypotheses regarding pension-plan asset allocations. Models are specified for both corporate and government defined-benefit plans that relate the characteristics of each plan to the percentage allocated to real estate investments. Our results confirm the existence of a significant size effect for both corporate and government pension plans, although we find mean levels of real estate allocation to be much lower than those suggested in previous real estate allocation studies. The article, however, contains some anomalous findings. In particular, our findings suggest that pension-plan sponsors do not hedge their real estate risk. We also find that pension-plan sponsors do not invest in real estate, as theory might suggest, to minimize the noise level in their pension liabilities.     

REITs风险收益特征及其资产配置作用

REITs具有“长期收益率高于股票、波动性低于股票”的风险／收益特征，更为重要的是REITs与股票、债券的相关系数低。机构投资者的传统组合中通常只包括债券、股票类证券，加AREITs可使组合优化，即组合有效边界向左上方移动，意味着在相同风险水平下，增加REITs后的组合可获得更高收益，或是为取得相同收益水平，增加REITs后的组合只承担更低风险。     

Property and Inflation: The Hedging Characteristics of U.K. Commercial Property, 1967–1994

This paper examines the statistical similarities between U.K. commercial property capital and rental values and the price level. Our aim is to determine whether commercial property is an inflation hedge and, if so, what type of inflation it hedges against. To answer these questions, we use both a multivariate unobserved components model and structural vector autoregressions. We find that commercial property is an inflation hedge but only a weak one. More specifically, we find that property offers some form of partial hedge against changes in the underlying inflation rate but not to either temporary or permanent changes to the price level. We also find that capital values offer a stronger hedge than rental values and that industrial and retail property account for most of this hedging capacity. We find no evidence that property responds differently to high or low inflation but we do find capital and rental values respond more to unexpected inflation than anticipated price changes.     

社会互动与家庭金融资产配置

运用中国家庭金融调查(CHFS)数据,研究社会互动与家庭金融资产配置之间的关系。研究发现,适当增强社会互动会促进家庭更多地参与风险金融市场,增加投资风险资产的比例,提高金融资产的分散化程度,优化资产的配置效率。但当社会互动达到一定程度后,过度的社会互动则会抑制家庭参与风险市场,减少风险资产的投资比重,降低金融资产的分散化程度以及资产配置的有效性。因此,家庭需要建立适度而高质量的社会互动,这有助于家庭获得更多的外部资源,缓解信息不对称,降低交易成本,从而优化家庭金融资产配置。     

债券与股票关联特征及对保险资产配置的启示

通过对2002年～2010年各种时间区间的债券和股票收益率相关性研究,发现债券和股票总体呈现负相关,随着考察时间区间的加大,相关性快速降低,且债券和股票之间在对方发生尾部风险时,具有一定对冲作用。这些特征对保险资金的战略性资产配置、战术性资产配置和再平衡操作都具有明显的借鉴意义。     

Relative Excess Returns

Building on a no-arbitrage relationship suggested by Clare, Thomas and Wickens (1994) between the returns on equity, bonds and treasury bills, this paper develops what is termed a 'relative excess returns' approach to the understanding of movements in equity prices. This no-arbitrage relationship is used to derive an explicit measure of excess returns, which incorporates both the excess returns to equity and bonds while netting out any unprofitable (i.e. market efficient) return predictability caused by time variation in the treasury bill rate. This measure can be related to a series of observable variables in a consistent manner and used to construct a trading rule aimed at forecasting excess returns. In a series of empirical experiments, this trading rule appears to be more 'profitable' than both the rule suggested by Clare et al. (1994) and the gilt-equity yield ratio rule (used by many UK analysts to guide investment decisions), and outperforms the strategy of 'buy and hold equity'. More generally, the analysis provides support for the existence of predictable excess returns — returns which cannot be attributed to time-varying excess returns — and for the inefficient market explanation of predictable returns.     

Asset Allocation Via The Conditional First Exit Time or How To Avoid Outliving Your Money

The risk of outliving your money (or shortfall) with low risk, low return investments is very often more serious than the risk of losing money on high risk investments, until quite late in life. A stochastic process model incorporating mortality tables for men and women of retirement age, random rates of return and fixed initial wealth and desired level of consumption provides the analytical tool. A simulation using Canadian mortality tables and rates of return shows that almost all retirees should invest some of their wealth in equity, and for many the optimal allocation is 70–100% equity. The risk of shortfall is surprisingly high for a reasonable range of values of the variables, especially for an allocation of 100% in treasury bills. Women face much greater risk of shortfall than men. The analytical model also permits calculation of the distribution of the bequest and hence allows an individual to trade off changes in shortfall risk against changes in the expected bequest to the heirs.     

资本约束下保险公司最优大类资产配置模型研究

中国第二代偿付能力监管制度体系(以下简称“偿二代”)执行以后,投资风险直接体现在资本要求上,资本充足率成为保险公司投资决策的重要约束。在此背景下,保险公司有必要建立整体经济资本预算框架,通过提高各类资产的边际资本回报率,提升公司股东价值。本文通过理论研究证明资本约束下保险公司最优大类资产配置的路径首先是进行负债风险匹配资产的管理,其次才是追求盈余资产收益最大化,同时,本文创新性提出了三阶段的数值求解方法,填补了国内文献以及保险公司实践中难以前置化资本约束得到大类资产配置数值解的研究空白。     

资产周期特性与保险公司资产配置策略

在竞争激烈的保险市场上,作为盈利的两大支柱之一,保险公司资产管理的能力日趋重要,而保险公司资产配置是保险资产管理的核心,其研究意义就显得尤为重要。本文首先给出保险资产配置的意义与总体原则,然后从保险资金的来源和特性入手,在详细分析了美国、中国不同经济周期和市场周期下大类资产风险收益特性的基础之上,给出保险公司资产负债管理和资产配置的战略决策建议。     

西方险企投资在金融危机中的整体表现及原因探析

保险资金投资组合整体上受本轮危机冲击不大,其中美国寿险公司通用账户的整体表现最好。其原因有:险资对次贷关联资产风险暴露十分有限且各类安全性指标出淤泥而不染;对受牵连的高风险资产,险资配置股权比例也低且私募股权账面值不受股指下跌拖累;债券方面,风险溢价上升与基准利率下调产生抵消作用,国企债在很多险资企业债中占上风。主要启示包括:险资资产配置要与波动性承受能力相适应,尤其主力资产要坚守传统安全资产、系统重要性资产。     

美国401（K）计划与IRA运作机制研究

IRA和401（k）计划分别是美国第二大和第一大退休储蓄账户。其中，401（k）计划由于其缴费和税收延付特点，已经为越来越多的美国大中型公司采用；而IRA由于其税收优惠和操作简单，越来越多的家庭和个人利用其进行退休储蓄。401（k）计划和IRA作为长期资金供给者在美国共同基金和资本市场发展中发挥了巨大的促进作用。     

Stochastic Interest Rates and the Bond-Stock Mix

The optimal bond-stock mix is examined in light of an apparentinconsistency between the Tobin Separation Theorem and the adviceof popular investment advisors which has been pointed out byCanner et al. (1997).It is shown that the apparent inconsistencyis largely explicable in terms of the hedging demands of optimisinglong-term investors in an environment in which the investmentopportunity set is subject to stochastic shocks. The analysispoints to the importance of considering investors' time horizonsin analyzing optimal portfolio policies.     

Equity Fund Performance Persistence with Investment Style: Evidence from Korea

Using a comprehensive database on equity funds in Korea, we investigate the performance and performance persistence with investment style employing the Fama and French three-factor model and the Carhart four-factor model. The paper finds that most investment styles in Korea noticeably outperform the passive benchmarks. In addition, positive performance persistence is observed among funds investing in large-cap stocks and stocks of high past performance. Finally, outperformance and positive performance persistence of equity funds are still present in various ranking and postranking horizons. These empirical findings are in sharp contrast with results from earlier studies on markets in developed countries, such as the United States.     

Stochastic regularization for the mean-variance allocation scheme

Despite being based on sound principles, the original Markovitz portfolio allocation theory cannot produce sound allocations, and restrictions or modifications need to be imposed from outside the theory in order to obtain meaningful portfolios. This is unsatisfactory, and the reasons for this failure are discussed, in particular, the unavoidable small eigenvalues of the covariance. Within the original principles of risk minimization and return maximization, several modifications of the original theory are introduced. First, the strategic and tactical time horizons are separated. A base long-term allocation is chosen at the strategic time horizon, while the portfolio is optimized at the tactical time horizon using information from the price histories. Second, the tactical portfolio is financed by the strategic one, and a funding operator is introduced. The corresponding optimal allocation (without constraints) has one free parameter fixing the leverage. Third, the transaction costs are taken into account. This includes the current re-allocation cost, but crucially the expected costs of the next reallocation. This last term depends on the sensitivity of the allocation with respect to the covariance, and the expectation introduces another dependency on the (inverse) covariance. The new term regularizes the original minimization problem by modifying the lower part of the spectrum of the covariance, leading to meaningful portfolios. Without constraints, the final Lagrangian can be minimized analytically, with a solution that has a structure similar to the original Markovitz solution, but with the inverse covariance regularized by the expected transaction costs.     

Stochastic Interest Rates and the Bond-Stock Mix

The optimal bond-stock mix is examined in light of an apparent inconsistency between the Tobin Separation Theorem and the advice of popular investment advisors which has beenpointed out by Canner et al. (1997). It is shown that the apparent inconsistency is largely explicable in terms of the hedging demands of optimising long-term investors in an environment in which the investment opportunity set is subject to stochastic shocks. The analysis points to the importance of considering investors' time horizons in analyzing optimal portfolio policies.     

Realised higher moments: theory and practice

This paper examines the incorporation of higher moments in portfolio selection problems utilising high-frequency data. Our approach combines innovations from the realised volatility literature with a portfolio selection methodology utilising higher moments. We provide an empirical study of the measurement of higher moments from tick by tick data and implement the model for a selection of stocks from the DOW 30 over the time period 2005–2011. We demonstrate a novel estimator for moments and co-moments in the presence of microstructure noise.     

随机规划模型与商业银行资产的最优配置

有关商业银行资产负债管理模型的研究表明,基于多阶段带简单补偿的资产负债随机模型适合现阶段中国商业银行的资产负债管理问题。本文建立了三大国有上市商业银行的简化资产负债管理模型,运用遗传算法进行运算求解。模型结果能反映商业银行资产配置的基本变化趋势;贷款配置比例始终大于债券投资比例,表明银行仍然立足于传统信贷业务;三大商业银行的最优资产配置略有差异。考虑到商业银行资产收益率以及存款负债流的不确定性,实证结果表明该模型对实际管理决策具有现实指导意义。     

资产配置对基金收益影响程度的定量分析

资产配置是证券投资决策的首要环节,它可分为战略性资产配置及包括选时和选股在内的战术性资产配置.资产配置不但影响了基金业绩沿时间的变化,还对基金之间的业绩差异具有较高的解释程度.本文利用中国的市场数据,度量了资产配置对基金收益的影响程度.     

Pension Funds and Emerging Markets

This paper focuses on the investment behavior of pension funds in developed and emerging market countries. First, it analyzes the main determinants of the emerging market asset allocation of pension funds in developed countries. Second, it assesses how pension funds in emerging markets have contributed to the development of local securities markets. Third, it analyzes the determinants of pension funds' investment performance. The paper concludes with a discussion of why the emerging market asset allocation of pension funds in developed countries is likely to increase and what the challenges faced by pension funds in emerging markets are.