Pension fund return s can be decomposed into different sources, including market movements, asset allo-cation policy, and active portfolio management. We use a unique database covering the asset allocations of US defined-benefit pension funds for the perio d 1990–2008, and we test the role...

In the late 1990s, controversies among academics and policymakers were focused to a large extent on the "pros and cons" of adopting a monetary regime of complete and official dollarization in many emerging countries. Conversely, towards the mid-2000s de-dollarization is one of the main themes of...

In this paper, we investigate the relative importance of drivers to pension funds’ asset allocation choices. We specifically test if the contrast between regulatory approaches of public and private Defined Benefits (DB) pension funds in the US, Canada and the Netherlands have an impact on the...

The future emergence of a European monetary zone is set to transform the configuration of the international monetary system and the roles of the dollar, the Euro and the yen within this system. This book addresses this issue with discussion of: * exchange rate policies pursued in the principal...

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund launched a joint initiative in September 1999, setting the fight against poverty at the heart of development policies. Under this initiative, developing countries wishing to apply for financial aid from either of the organizations, or for debt...

In the first section of this paper, the author demonstrates the crucial significance of anchoring symbolically a currency in the representation of a social whole, not least when practical and technical problems bound up with the creation of a new unit of account and the associated means of...

This paper examines jointly the empirical relevance of the mean-reversion and the PPP hypotheses in the exchange rate dynamics under the EMS. Given the non-stationarity and the non-linearities characterizing the foreign exchange rate dynamics, this question is studied using a MS-ECM model: it...