In the wake of the financial crisis, several countries are to ban commission payments to improve the quality of financial advice. This paper investigates the potential impact of commission bans on the source and quality of financial advice. To this end, we extend Inderst and Ottaviani's (2012)...

In this paper various Value-at-Risk techniques are applied tot the Dutch stock market index AEX and to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. the main conclusions are: (1) Changing volatility over time is the most important characteristic of stock returns when modelling value-at-risk; (2) For high...

Traditional theory suggests that high franchise value limits bank risk-taking incentives. Then why did many banks with exceptionally valuable franchises get exposed to new financial instruments, resulting in significant losses during the crisis? This paper attempts to reconcile theory and...

This paper models policy responses to changes in solvency by Dutch occupational pension funds using a unique panel dataset containing the balance sheets of all registered pension funds in the Netherlands over a period of 15 years (1993-2007). The model describes how nominal pension rights are...

This paper is the first to analyze market impact and execution costs of equity trading by a pension fund. We find that, on average, these costs are nonnegligible. Average market impact costs equal 20 basis points for buys and 30 basis points for sells; average execution costs equal 27 basis...

We examine the relationship between credit ratings and bond yield spreads of peripheral countries in the euro area (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain) for the period 1995-2014. Since 2012, bond spreads of those countries have come down very fast, whereas credit ratings have hardly...

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...