Current Issues in Financial Economics: An Overview

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a number of contemporary issues in financial economics. The issues analyzed include causes of bank failures, financing of small and medium size enterprise financing, convergence of international equity markets, the importance of CEOs to shareholders, the effects of Accounting Standard 158, the impact of credit cards on aggregate money holdings, and measures of industrial concentration.     

Participation and Poverty Reduction: An Analytical Framework and Overview of the Issues

This paper examines the relationship between community participationand the efficacy of interventions designed to reduce poverty.It outlines a simple model that identifies three actors involvedin the provision of antipoverty interventions: financiers, providersand beneficiaries. This model is used to illustrate what happenswhen the poor move from being passive beneficiaries to beingthe providers of these interventions. Beneficiary participationhas the potential to lower the cost of providing these interventions.It can ensure that they more closely reflect the preferencesof the population that they are designed to serve. However,this benefit is contingent on the ability of communities toengage in collective actions. In fractionalised communities,or where trust and/or social capital are weak, there is a riskthat community participation may result in the capture of benefitsby local elites, to the detriment of the poor. Further, we arguethat the failure to delegate true decision-making authority(allowing for de jure but not de facto participation), may resultin beneficiaries being reluctant to act because of concernsthat they will be subsequently overruled.     

The Economics of Pensions

This paper sets out the economic analytics of pensions. Afterintroductory discussion, successive sections consider the effectsof different pension arrangements on labour markets, on nationalsavings and growth, and on the distribution of burdens and benefits.These areas are controversial and politically highly salient.While we are open about expressing our own views, the main purposeof the paper is to set out the analytical process by which wereach them, to enable readers to form their own conclusions. Footnotes ¹ E-mail addresses: n.barr{at}lse.ac.uk; pdiamond{at}mit.edu     

Taxes and Pensions

Pension benefit rules depend on individual history far more than taxes do, and age plays a much larger role in pension determination than in tax determination. Apart from some simulation studies, theoretical studies of optimal tax design typically contain neither a mandatory pension system nor the behavioral dimensions that lie behind justifications commonly offered for mandatory pensions. Conversely, optimizing models of pension design typically do not include annual taxation of labor and capital incomes. After spelling out this contrast and reviewing (and rejecting) zero taxation of capital income based on the Atkinson‐Stiglitz and Chamley‐Judd results, this article raises the issue of tax‐favored retirement savings, a topic where the two subjects come together.     

Reforming Occupational Pensions in the Netherlands: Contract and Intergenerational Aspects

De Economist - In the summer of 2020 the Dutch government and social partners have agreed on a pension reform involving the transformation of occupational pensions from the current defined-benefit...     

信息和信息化的哲学问题研究综述

“信息”的哲学问题由来已久,但一直未引起哲学界真正重视。最近西方哲学界提出“信息哲学”研究纲领,把“信息”作为哲学基本概念列入研究范畴。正是信息哲学问题研究的不断发展,为马克思主义哲学提供了新的论证,对其发展也提出了新的问题。     

The Rationale for Occupational Pensions

Employers and employees have no incentive to include pensionsas part of employment contracts unless the pension completesa missing market, or ameliorates an imperfection in existingcapital or labour markets. We examine the influence on the choiceand design of occupational pensions of capital- and labour-marketimperfections. In capital markets, we focus on basis risks,taxation, employer default risks, transactions costs, portfoliorestrictions, and liquidity constraints. Aspects of labour marketsaffecting occupational pensions may be the presence of firm-specifichuman capital, asymmetric information between firms and potentialhires, the presence of moral hazard, and internal labour marketsin firms which cause employers to attempt to control the retirementbehaviour of workers. The implications of this analysis of occupationalpensions for public policy towards pensions are briefly examined. Footnotes ¹ E-mail address: dg.mccarthy{at}imperial.ac.uk     

完善企业年金监管的几点思考

由美国次贷危机引发的全球金融风波至今已近四年,其造成的损失和影响自20世纪30年代以来前所未有.美国、英国和欧盟为防止危机对经济的进一步拖累,纷纷提出自己的金融监管改革计划,以应对危机.文章首先介绍了美国和欧盟金融监管改革的发展历程,然后总结了美欧金融监管改革对我国加强金融监管的启示,最后结合国际金融监管改革的新动向,并从市场化、风险控制和构建合作机制等三方面提出了改善我国企业年金监管的政策建议.     

Measuring Lifetime Redistribution in Dutch Occupational Pensions

Summary  This paper assesses how the Dutch system of occupational pensions redistributes between and within generations. The approach in this paper deviates from the usual approach by incorporating the full life cycle in the measurements, rather than only the annual effects. In order to quantify redistribution, we use the level of educational attainment, gender and age to classify the pension fund population. For all groups distinguished, we measure in present value terms the average net benefit from participating in occupational pensions. The results indicate a sizable redistribution from males to females and from low educated to higher educated workers. On a lifetime basis, the impact of intergenerational transfers is modest. I am grateful to the two anonymous referees, Ed Westerhout, Casper van Ewijk, Lex Meijdam, Yvonne Adema and Peter Kooiman for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and to Andre Nibbelink for his valuable computational assistance.     

Redesigning Regulation of Pensions and Other Financial Products

We observe that financial regulation is ever-growing, with thelatest area to experience increased supervisory attention beingpensions. Yet this has not made the financial world or consumerssafer, and for pensions in particular there are unexpected andundesired consequences. We explore the current policy approachto supervision, which is ‘bottom up’, i.e. assessmentand regulation of individual institutions, with the aim ofmakingthe financial system safe by making each institution safe. Weshow that this is both damaging (because it stifles innovation)and does not work (because risk will always be squeezed fromthe regulated institutions to the less regulated and less seen).Instead, we advocate a ‘top-down’ approach, whichfocuses on making the system safe first. We conclude that onceyou have made systems safe, detailed supervision of individualinstitutions is less necessary, thus reducing the burden ofsupervision. We believe that this approach will lead to a moresuitable and diverse treatment of different risks that willincrease both systemic and consumer safety. ‘If you haveten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law’,Winston Churchill (1931). ‘The ultimate result of shieldingmen from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools’,Herbert Spencer (1891). Footnotes ¹ E-mail addresses: n.barr{at}lse.ac.uk; john_nugee{at}ssga.com     

Pensions and Retirement Among Black Union Army Veterans

I examine the effects of an unearned income transfer on the retirement rates and living arrangements of black Union Army veterans. I find that blacks were more than twice as responsive as whites to income transfers in their retirement decisions and 6 to 8 times as responsive in their choice of independent living arrangements. My findings have implications for understanding racial differences in rates of retirement and independent living at the beginning of the twentieth century, the rise in retirement prior to 1930, and the subsequent convergence in black-white retirement rates and living arrangements.     

Regionalism: An Overview

Regional trading arrangements are proliferating. This overview considers some of their implications. Section I reviews the paradigm of traditional trade theory which emphasizes the "second best" nature of these arrangements. It also evaluates the conditions under which they are permitted by the GATT. Section II notes that these arrangements increasingly move beyond simply removing internal border barriers toward deeper forms of integration involving common behind-the-border policies and systems of governance. Taking account of these aspects of the arrangements requires a different analytic paradigm, which evaluates these arrangements as an alternative to national governance rather than simply as a means of liberalizing trade. Section III considers existing and emerging regional arrangements in Europe, North America, and Asia in light of these paradigms. J. Japan. Int. Econ., Dec. 1994, 8(4), pp. 365–387. John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Brookings Institution, Washington, DC.     

Stochastic Generational Accounting Applied to Reforms of Dutch Occupational Pensions

This paper examines stochastic or ‘value based’ generational accounting as a method to assess the intergenerational redistributive impact of pension reform. The analysis is applied to three policy changes to the regulation of Dutch occupational pensions during the years 2012 and 2013 that mark the transition from defined benefit pensions to ‘defined ambition’ pension schemes.     

Mandatory Pensions and Personal Savings in The Netherlands*

The Netherlands has a relatively generous social security system and a wide coverage of individuals by private (occupational) pension schemes. Total household savings are rather high and fairly stable, although the amount of contractual savings apears to be going up at the expense of non-contractual (free) savings. Using an approach originally pioneered by Feldstein (1974) we employ microdata to investigate the displacement effect of security and pension wealth on free household savings. It turns out that the data available are too noisy to make precise statements about the displacement effects. Our results do suggest, however, that a one-for-one displacement of free savings by social security is consistent with the data. For pensions such a complete offset is less likely. This suggests that increase of coverage by private pensions is an effective way of raising savings.