Employer matching of employee 401(k) contributions can provide a powerful incentive to save for retirement and is a key component in pension-plan design in the United States. Using detailed administrative contribution, earnings, and pension-plan data from the Health and Retirement Study, this...

Using data for more than 200 banks from 21 OECD countries for the period 2002 to 2008, we examine the impact of bank regulation and supervision on banking risk using quantile regressions. In contrast to most previous research, we find that banking regulation and supervision has an effect on the...

There is an ongoing debate whether firm focus creates or destroys shareholder value. Earlierliterature has shown significant diversification discounts: firms that engage in multiple activitiesare valued less. Various factors are important in the size of the discount, for example...

This paper shows how large data sets can be visualized in a dynamic way to support exploratory research, highlight econometric results or provide early warning information. The case studies included in this paper case are based on the payments and unsecured money market transaction data of the...

Market valuation is becoming more and more popular, both in accounting and regulation, as well as in academic circles. For pension funds and their participants, the knowledge that market-valued pension liabilities can indeed be transferred to a third party, if necessary, is a great virtue. Using...

Often, a relatively small group of trades causes the major part of the trading costs on an investment portfolio. For the equity trades studied in this paper, executed by the world's second largest pension fund, we find that only 10% of the trades determines 75% of total market impact costs....

Administrative and investment costs per participant appear to vary widely across pension funds. These costs are important because they reduce the rate of return on the investments of pension funds and consequently raise the cost of retirement security. This paper examines the impact of...

This paper reports on the findings of a survey among Dutch households (as part of the DNB Household Survey in 2003) about many aspects (expectations, concerns, attitude and preferences) of their pensions and the old-age-arrangements in the Netherlands. We explore whether the outcomes are related...

This study is an introduction to and summary of the 2002 Annual Meeting papers of the Royal Netherlands Economic Association. The general theme of this year's Annual Meeting is 'The role of wealth in the economy'. It is covered by 5 papers, which address the following topics: (i) household...

In this paper we derive an analytic valuation formula for a generalized form of liabilities in hybrid pension plans taking account of both equity and interest rate risk. Comparative statistics are carried out to show the relevance of some key parameters in defining the hybrid pension plans,...