For pension-savers, a low payoff is a financial disaster. Such investors will most likely prefer left-skewed payoff distributions over right-skewed payoff distributions. We explore how such distributions can be delivered. Cautious-relaxed utility measures are cautious in ensuring that payoffs...

Guarantees are often seen as the key characteristics of pension saving products, but securing them can become costly and is of central relevance especially in the course of the current low interest rate environment. In this article, we deal with the question of how costly the typical types of...

This paper provides a quantitative analysis of hypothetical replacements of existing tax arrangements applied to superannuation (Australia.s term for private pensions) with traditional EET and TEE regimes. These taxation regimes exempt pension fund earnings from any taxation and tax either...

Institutional investment in Australia is both highly innovative and complex. The regulatory focus – and associated literature – on institutional investment has been on the sell-side. Considerably less attention has been paid to the buy-side, that is to the institutional investors themselves....

The Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) requires various disclosures be made to pension plan participants. These disclosures are required to ensure that plan participants are able to make informed decisions regarding their investment choices, for the plan to remain a tax-qualified...

The New Zealand Income Tax Amendment Act 1989 completed the reform of the New Zealand laws on the taxation of superannuation schemes. The object was to bring the taxation of superannuation schemes into line with the taxation of other forms of saving. The Act introduces the specified...

Gender impact analysis of the tax transfer system makes gender issues in policies and budgets visible and enables their complexities to be revealed. By doing so, it facilitates the development of more equitable and efficient alternatives. This article provides a gender impact analysis of...

This paper discusses the tax and transfer treatment of private superannuation retirement saving and the public means tested age pension in Australia. Superannuation savings benefit from concessional treatment in Australia's tax system by comparison with other forms of saving, measured against an...

The taxation of superannuation has been subject to much speculation and commentary in recent times. This discussion is prompted every year when the Commonwealth Treasury produces the Tax Expenditures Statement, which provides details of more than 350 tax expenditures. The latest Statement,...