Large sections of the UK population are failing to make adequate provision for their retirement, and one area where provision is notably poor is amongst people working for small and medium sized businesses. We use information gathered from interviews with individuals from a wide range of...

This paper examines the performance of personal pensions (exempt unit trusts) in the UK 1980-2000. Unitised personal pension schemes are a type of mutual fund that is constituted as a contractual savings scheme, whose value can only be accessed at retirement. By studying the performance of these...

This paper estimates the implied stochastic process of the volatility of the Swiss market index (SMI) from the prices of options written on it. A GARCH(1,1) model is shown to be a good parameterization of the process. Then, using the GARCH option pricing model of Duan (1991), the implied...

In 2014 several groupings of developing countries agreed to set up a series of new multilateral development finance institutions. These include the BRICS-sponsored New Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund. This paper examines the role these new...