偿付能力、生命周期与养老金动态调整策略

本文从生命周期的角度,把养老保险基金的偿付能力作为内生变量,直接引入到养老金调整模型,使之能够自我反馈信息和修正预测偏差,并能根据偿付能力的变化对养老金进行动态调整,最终使养老保障能力与偿付能力实现了内在统一。情景分析表明:(1)在人口出生率和经济增速持续放缓的趋势下,如果不优化当前的养老金调整模式,偿付能力不足的程度将持续加剧;(2)与现行政策和现有模型相比,基于偿付能力构建的调整模型,能有效缓解偿付能力不足的程度,而且降低了养老金大幅波动的风险;(3)结合生命周期理论来调整养老金,不仅偿付能力的提升效果优于其它模式,而且延长了参保人员应对风险的时间,更加符合风险承受能力变化的生命周期特征,提高了抵抗风险的能力;(4)在制定延迟退休年龄等政策时,要综合考虑调整模式、养老金增长率和人口出生率等多方面因素,养老保险基金才可能持久地保持充足的偿付能力。     

Blitzscaling: The good,the bad,and the ugly

Today’s disruptive innovations are driving the creation of numerous billion-dollar startups. Venture capitalists focus on these potentially disruptive technology startups and fund them furiously, advancing their speed of growth. The idea is to scale fast and seek huge returns for investors. Terms that define this type of aggressive scaling have recently developed in Silicon Valley. Unicorn is defined as a venture with a value of $1 billion, while a decacorn describes startups with a value of $10 billion. Another recent term is blitzscaling: funding a venture for extremely fast growth and prioritizing speed over efficiency in an environment of uncertainty. While blitzscaling is being used heavily by investors in Silicon Valley, we look at exactly what comprises this new phenomenon and how it is used in practice. We examine the concept, its stages, and its prevalence before reviewing the different examples of how the strategy has been implemented for success (the good), cases of its failure in practice (the bad), and the extreme cases of ethical compromise by ventures (the ugly). From these cases, we draw specific lessons that, if understood and appropriately addressed, would help new ventures effectively implement the strategy.     

The strange case of the Matthew effect and beauty contests: Research evaluation and specialisation in Italian universities

The paper aims to determine whether the distribution of funds that prizes the best-performing institutions relatively more has the effect of replicating the Matthew effect within them in terms of personnel policies and allocating proportionally more resources to the best departments to strengthen their output considering the prospect of future assessments. Data from the Italian public university system between 2011 and 2016 as well as the outcomes of the national evaluation of research produced between 2004 and 2010 and between 2011 and 2014 in 14 disciplinary research areas are used. The empirical evidence shows that Italian universities have tended to increase their specialisation in the research areas in which they ranked below or slightly above the national mean, revealing that they chose to try to strengthen the weak sectors through both promotions and new recruitments. The results suggest the existence of a dual policy. When the Ministry of Education, University and Research tries to foster a Matthew effect mechanism, allocating more resources to the best-performing universities, the latter seem to opt to implement a beauty contest strategy to make their weak areas converge towards the national mean. When considering the effects of the recruiting strategies following the national evaluation of research, the results indicate the existence of some Matthew effects, showing that increasing specialisation is more fruitful for the best than for the worst universities.     

The supply of education quality in a spatial model with asymmetric moving costs

The paper analyses the characteristics of the supply of higher education in different geographical macroareas using a strategic interaction framework. It focuses on universities operating in centralised funding system that autonomously set the quality of education showing that in equilibrium it is inversely related to students’ moving costs across areas. We show that in the presence of asymmetric information about workers’ ability and asymmetric costs of moving, the only PBE consistent with forward induction involves that only high ability workers acquire education and the quality of education is lower in macroareas where the moving costs are higher. Our model predicts that in economies with centralised university funding, educational policies must be regulated according to the specific socioeconomic characteristics of the area. Direct subsidies to universities may be ineffective in improving the quality of education in the less developed areas. When regional disparities are not too big, efficiency gains may be obtained by reducing moving costs.     

Pay me now (and later): Pension benefit manipulation before plan freezes and executive retirement

Large US firms modify top executives’ compensation before pension-related events. Top executives receive one-time increases in pensionable earnings through higher annual bonuses one year before a plan freeze and one year before retirement. Firms also boost pension payouts by lowering plan discount rates when top executives are eligible to retire with lump-sum benefit distributions. Increases in executive pensions do not appear to be an attempt to improve managerial effort or retention and are more likely to occur at firms with poor corporate governance. These findings suggest that in some circumstances managers are able to extract rents through their pension plans.     

长三角地区住房反向抵押养老保险需求研究--基于“医养结合”一体化视角

我国人口老龄化问题凸显,给传统社会养老保障体系带来巨大挑战。住房反向抵押养老保险作为"医养结合"养老模式下的新型商业养老保险,可拓宽养老金融筹资渠道,缓解社会养老压力。本文在对长三角地区人口老龄化背景下住房反向抵押养老保险需求情况进行问卷调查的基础上,运用logistc回归模型和交叉列表分析法对数据进行了分析,认为我国推行住房反向抵押养老保险应在政府推动下进行。     

CEO inside debt and investment‐cash flow sensitivity

This paper provides a new explanation for investment‐cash flow sensitivity from the perspective of CEO inside debt holdings. We examine the effect of CEO pensions and deferred compensation (inside debt) on investment‐cash flow sensitivity for a sample of U.S. manufacturing firms from 2006 to 2012. We find that the firms with higher relative CEO leverage ratios (CEO's debt/equity ratio scaled by the firm's debt/equity ratio) generate higher investment‐cash flow sensitivity. Moreover, one standard deviation increase in the logarithm of the relative CEO leverage ratio enlarges investment‐cash flow sensitivity by 50 per cent. This positive relationship still holds even after we take account of endogeneity and financial constraints.     

Rollover Risk,Liquidity and Macroprudential Regulation

I study rollover risk in wholesale funding markets when intermediaries hold liquidity ex ante and fire sales may occur ex post. Multiple equilibria exist in a global rollover game: intermediate liquidity holdings support equilibria with both positive and zero expected liquidation. A simple uniqueness refinement pins down the private liquidity choice, which balances the forgone expected return on investment with reduced fragility and costly liquidation. Due to fire sales, liquidity holdings are strategic substitutes. Intermediaries free ride on the holdings of other intermediaries, causing excessive liquidation. To internalize the systemic nature of liquidity, a macroprudential authority imposes liquidity buffers.     

从税收竞争视角看居民医疗保险筹资与商业健康保险发展

本文从地方政府税收竞争视角,探讨居民医疗保险筹资与商业健康保险发展的关系。在动态经济模型基础上,构建稅收竞争下居民医疗保险筹资与商业健康保险发展的理论框架。利用空间计量模型和合成控制法对理论模型进行系统的实证分析。研究结果表明:在财政下行压力和资本边际收益递减的宏观背景下,地方政府在民生领域的高支出竞争偏好,倒逼地方政府展开新一轮税收竞争,容易导致地方政府财政收入减少和财政困难,从而增加居民医疗保险财政筹资压力。在这个过程中居民医疗保险筹资水平提高,能够凸显商业健康保险在医疗保障筹资体系中的补充地位。     

THE EFFECTS OF PENSION FUNDS ON MARKETS PERFORMANCE: A REVIEW

The worldwide reforming process of pension systems triggered by the demographic transition and globalization has led several countries to implement multi‐pillar pension systems and enhance pension funds. For this reason the studies on the effects that pension funds exert on markets performance have been flourishing in the last decades. In this paper, we provide an updated review of the empirical advances in this field of study, with particular focus on the effects that pension funds produce on labour markets, financial markets and economic growth.