This paper analyses the UK market for Defined Benefit (DB) pension buyouts and considers its implications for the USA. A DB pension fund buyout refers to a transaction in which a pension plan sponsor pays another company a fee to take over the assets and liabilities of the pension plan. Using...

Despite the relevance of fair value accounting to the financial statements, it was not adopted by standard setting bodies until recently. This paper investigates the evolution of fair value accounting in the USA and shows that several factors, such as accounting standard setting bodies,...

The compensation hypothesis predicts a positive causation from international economic openness to the size of the public sector, as governments step in to perform a risk mitigating role to counterbalance the increasing exposure to external risk and the economic dislocations caused by growing...

The sub-prime crisis began in mid-2007 as a bursting of the US housing market bubble and became a truly global meltdown in 2008. Renewed instability in financial markets precipitated awareness of how policy makers must react to systemic failures. This paper discusses the primary policy issues...