The retirement wealth of the baby boom generation

The paper compares the well-being of the baby boom generation (ages 40-55) in 2001 with the same age group in 1983. I find little evidence that their relative position deteriorated over the period. By some indicators, this generation has seen an improvement. In terms of income, the 40-55 age group was at about the same relative position in 2001 as in 1983. In terms of conventional wealth, there was some slippage over the period. In terms of mean augmented wealth (net worth plus pension and Social Security wealth), their relative position improved somewhat but in terms of median augmented wealth there was again some slippage.     

Baby Boomer retirement security: The roles of planning, financial literacy, and housing wealth

We compare wealth holdings across two cohorts of the Health and Retirement Study: the early Baby Boomers in 2004, and individuals in the same age group in 1992. Levels and patterns of total net worth have changed relatively little over time, though Boomers rely more on housing equity than their predecessors. Most important, planners in both cohorts arrive close to retirement with much higher wealth levels and display higher financial literacy than non-planners. Instrumental variables estimates show that planning behavior can explain the differences in savings and why some people arrive close to retirement with very little or no wealth.     

Shareholder wealth effects of M&A withdrawals

This paper provides evidence on the wealth effect in the event of the withdrawal of a merger or acquisition, and the impact of termination fee provisions on acquirer withdrawal returns. I report a significant negative correlation between acquirer withdrawal returns and announcement returns, consistent with the theory of managerial learning in M&As. Target firms reap net gains in deal withdrawals, showing evidence of a permanent revaluation of targets even if the deals fail. I also find that acquirer termination fee provisions are positively associated with acquirer withdrawal returns, suggesting that such provisions may play a disciplinary role in the withdrawal decision-making and protect acquirer shareholders’ interests in deal withdrawals. Furthermore, my results also show that target termination fee provisions are negatively associated with acquirer withdrawal returns, which supports the efficiency hypothesis.

     

The new retirement reality: calculating the true cost of retirement income adequacy

Recognizing that 401(k) plans are emerging as many employees' sole source of employer-sponsored retirement income, plan sponsors are increasingly adding paternalistic plan features to increase the amount--and effectiveness--of dollars invested in 401(k) accounts. The authors describe the results of a study they prepared for Hewitt Associates that assesses retirement income adequacy for individuals represented in a plan participant database of 1.8 million individuals. The study includes analysis of retirement income adequacy for the aggregate population as well as the results for different subgroups, reflecting factors such as whether individuals actively contribute; the impact of different levels of retiree medical coverage; and the presence of a defined benefit pension. Finally, the authors discuss how plan sponsors can bolster the adequacy of retirement income from 401(k) plans, depending on employer objectives.     

The creation of wealth

The paper is concerned with the existence of a consumption sequence that implies wealth to grow at a given rate. It is shown that under reasonable assumptions such a sequence exists and can be determined by solving a fixed-point problem.     

Bondholders’ wealth effects in domestic and cross-border bank mergers

The recent credit crisis and the increased internationalization of the European banks have given the debate about the role of national regulators a renewed urgency. We therefore investigate the determinants of bondholders’ abnormal returns for both domestic and cross-border bank merger announcements that involve European acquirers for the period 1998–2002. We find that bondholders’ abnormal returns are higher for Domestic Mergers than cross-border mergers, in direct contrast to evidence from equity prices where no difference is found. Further investigations in which we control for the changes in market power for example suggest this result may be indicative of investors perceiving Domestic Mergers as increasing the probability of a government bailout in case of distress. Banks’ bondholders also experience higher abnormal returns when the country of the partner bank has stricter rules in relation to forbearance of prudential regulations than the own country, and when functional diversification between lending and fee/trading activities increases.     

近看中国独立财富管理机构

独立财富管理机构运行模式 伴随中国国内私人财富的大幅增长,独立财富管理机构近几年野蛮成长.独立财富管理机构主要是指那些独立的中介理财机构,它们不同于银行、保险、基金等金融机构,而是按照客户的实际情况来帮客户分析自身财务状况和理财的需求,他们主要提供综合性的理财规划服务.根据公开数据显示,目前各类独立财富管理机构超过万家,其中较为知名的财富管理机构数百家.     

支付方式与收购公司财富效应

股权分置改革之后,股票支付成为我国上市公司并购的主要支付工具之一。本文以股改后并购事件为研究对象,采用事件研究法来实证检验收购公司在并购首次公告期间的财富效应,且分别检验不同支付方式下的财富效应差异。结果表明,股改之后并购为收购公司股东创造了正的财富效应,股票支付的收购公司所取得的超常收益显著为正,且显著大于现金支付所获得的超常收益。超常收益的影响因素分析发现一些交易特征对收购公司超常收益有显著的影响。     

Understanding your retirement savings: How the recent economic recession changed advertising in retirement financial services

This study investigates how messages, creative strategies and advertising disclosures utilized by US retirement financial services (RFS) providers changed in response to the recent economic crisis. A content analysis examines a total of 1819 RFS print advertisements published in six national magazines during the period 2005–2009. Three significant findings emerge: (1) the recession led to a change in the use of informational message strategies over transformational message strategies, (2) there were significant differences in the use of message and creative strategies during the five-year period, and (3) the RFS providers increasingly adhered to governmental advertising disclosure guidelines concerning consumer financial welfare. Implications for financial services advertisers and public policymakers are addressed.     

Understanding your retirement savings: How the recent economic recession changed advertising in retirement financial services

This study investigates how messages, creative strategies and advertising disclosures utilized by US retirement financial services (RFS) providers changed in response to the recent economic crisis. A content analysis examines a total of 1819 RFS print advertisements published in six national magazines during the period 2005–2009. Three significant findings emerge: (1) the recession led to a change in the use of informational message strategies over transformational message strategies, (2) there were significant differences in the use of message and creative strategies during the five-year period, and (3) the RFS providers increasingly adhered to governmental advertising disclosure guidelines concerning consumer financial welfare. Implications for financial services advertisers and public policymakers are addressed.     

Determinants of planned retirement age

Determinants of planned retirement age are analyzed. The prediction equation indicates that planned retirement age increases substantially as people get older, and increases somewhat with higher noninvestment income. Social Security reform should recognize that the capacity to continue working and the ability to afford to retire both influence the age at which people plan to retire. The range of planned retirement ages suggests that research on the adequacy of retirement preparation should focus on planned retirement age. Financial planners should consider the finding that planned retirement age increases with age.     

Dynamic incentives and retirement

This paper examines multi-period compensation contracts when retirement is anticipated. Short-term contracts in long-term employment relationships are equivalent to a long-term renegotiation-proof contract. The dynamic of incentive rates is determined by (i) how and in which periods managerial effort affects the contractible performance measures; and by (ii) the time-series correlation of error terms in performance reports. The model explains why long-term investments can decrease while incentive rates increase as managers approach retirement. Earnings persistence is negatively associated to earnings-based incentive rates but, towards retirement, high earnings persistence implies increasing earnings-based incentive rates.     

Facing the new facts of retirement income adequacy

A range of new factors is responsible for the current problem with insufficient retirement resources. Changes inside and outside the organization share partial responsibility, as do employee behaviors. In addition, other factors simply have been overlooked as employers and employees think about retirement income adequacy. The authors describe the current situation, discuss the significant risks it creates for both employers and employees and advise employers on what they should do to help employees build a more secure future in retirement.     

An equilibrium model of wealth distribution

I present an explicitly solved equilibrium model for the distribution of wealth and income in an incomplete-markets economy. I first propose a self-insurance model with an inter-temporally dependent preference [Uzawa, H. 1968. Time preference, the consumption function, and optimal asset holdings. In: Wolfe, J.N. (Ed.), Value, Capital, and Growth: Papers in Honour of Sir John Hicks. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 485-504]. I then derive an analytical consumption rule which captures stochastic precautionary saving motive and generates stationary wealth accumulation. Finally, I provide a complete characterization for the equilibrium cross-sectional distribution of wealth and income in closed form by developing a recursive formulation for the moments of the distribution of wealth and income. Using this recursive formulation, I show that income persistence and the degree of wealth mean reversion are the main determinants of wealth-income correlation and relative dispersions of wealth to income, such as skewness and kurtosis ratios between wealth and income.     

余发强:创新企业的融资、融智、融才和融财

许多初创企业的老板或负责人,大多数有了一个特别或了不起的创意,就开始筹划创业.有的家里有钱能够帮助扶持一下;有的需要找亲戚朋友筹借资金;有的找人一起合伙拼凑资金.无论以何种方式作为走向创业的第一步都无可厚非,我仅从以下四个方面谈谈我个人对于创业的体会. 第一,融资.融资通常是创新企业都会想到的事情,做大做强需要资金.有些人会说类似于"有了资金我一定做得比某某人更好!"之类的话.大多数人讲"融资"好似就是讲钱,要融进来多少资金,但我想重新分析这个词语,从另一个角度来看"融资".     

Interpreting the predictive power of the consumption–wealth ratio

Lettau and Ludvigson [Lettau, M., Ludvigson, S.C., 2001a. Consumption, aggregate wealth and expected stock returns. Journal of Finance 56, 815–849] find that the estimated consumption–wealth ratio (cay) is a strong predictor of U.S. stock returns, while Brennan and Xia [Brennan, M.J., Xia, Y., 2005. tay's as good as cay. Finance Research Letters 2, 1–14] argue that the predictive power of cay arises from a look-ahead bias. In a unified framework, we examine how the presence of deterministic time trends affects the estimation and forecasting power of cay. We show that ignoring the presence of a deterministic time trend in estimating the cointegrating relationship among consumption, asset wealth, and labor income leads to a biased estimate of the consumption–wealth ratio. In the presence of a deterministic time trend, cay is a combination of the highly persistent bias component and the unbiased cointegrating residual, and most of the predictive power of cay is attributable to the bias component, casting doubt on the robustness of the forecasting power of cay.     

实现财富管理行业可持续发展

在"中国财富管理50人论坛首届年会"上,中国证监会主席助理张育军则表示,没有投资人的价值成长,就没有财富管理行业可持续发展的基础,也就没有资本市场健康稳定的发展。他说近年来,随着中国经济、金融的快速发展,随着居民财富的不断积累与增长,中国财富管理行业取得了令人瞩目的成绩:机构日益多元,产品不断丰富,规模不断增长。截止2012年底,中国的基金管理公司     

The wealth effects of shareholder-sponsored proposals

Shareholder-sponsored proposals represent direct attempts to improve the operating and governance performance of publicly held corporations. This study examines the different types of shareholder proposals to determine their impact on value. While some recent studies show positive wealth effects for small or specific samples associated with shareholder proposal announcements or no wealth effects at all, this study documents significant negative abnormal returns for a large sample of firms. The results of previous studies suggest that shareholder proposals are beneficial to shareholders, and this study shows that to be true for only a fraction of them. Although management opposes the overwhelming majority of shareholder proposals, there are rare instances in which they either support the proposal and negotiate a settlement or in which the proposal receives enough support at the annual meeting to pass. This study documents positive abnormal returns for these cases.     

The redistribution of wealth in inflation

The paper presents formulation of the debtor-creditor hypothesis of redistribution of wealth in inflation. A portfolio model is used to derive an expression for the change in real rate of return measuring inflation gain or loss. The situation is relevant when the market rates of return fail fully to respond to expectations or when the inflation rate is not fully predictable. Of the wealth transfers from the private sector to the government in inflation, the model only covers the case of inflation tax. The model is employed to consider the controversial issue of inventory gains in inflation. The conclusion is that neither LIFO or FIFO can be regarded as having general validity as inventory accounting method in inflation.