In choosing a glide path strategy for asset allocation over their working lives, retirement savers face a tradeoff between the higher expected wealth provided by strategies that maintain or increase equity holdings over time, against the greater potential security offered from shifting into more...

Many countries are currently increasing the advanced funding of their public pension systems to improve their sustainability in the face of rapidly aging populations. When pensions are funded, the issue of asset allocation becomes of paramount importance. Through compound interest, the rate of...

A line of recent studies cast doubt on the efficacy of the lifecycle investment strategy, which calls for switching into a more conservative investment portfolio as retirement approaches, as a suitable way to provide for the retirement needs of workers with defined-contribution pensions. After...

The Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) of Sri Lanka is a defined-contribution pension fund whose pooled asset holdings consist mainly of local government bonds. Regulations prohibit international diversification, and this paper aims to quantify the extent of the potential harms, if any, caused by...

This paper provides an investigation of the impacts of pension funds on capital market development, both for stock markets and bond markets. For the overall sample of countries, we find that pension fund financial assets have positive impacts on stock market depth and liquidity as well as...

Pakistan’s pension system is in the process of increasing funding in anticipation of providing for a growing elderly population. Regulations require that these pension assets be invested domestically. In this paper, we quantify how diversification of the pension funds to include world...

A line of recent studies cast doubt on the efficacy of the lifecycle investment strategy, which calls for switching into a more conservative investment portfolio as retirement approaches, as a suitable way to provide for the retirement needs of workers with defined-contribution pensions. After...

Basu and Drew (in the JPM Spring 2009 issue) argue that lifecycle asset allocation strategies are counterproductive to the retirement savings goals of typical individual investors. Because of the portfolio size effect, most portfolio growth will occur in the years just before retirement when...