We examine the daily activity and performance of a large panel of individual investors in Sweden's Premium Pension System in the period 2000 to 2010. We find that active investors outperform passive investors, and that there is a causal effect of fund changes on performance. Chosen funds...

The paper deals with the question of whether it is possible to combine the insights and recommendations of optimal individual lifecycle investing with the proven gains of defined benefit pension funds. These gains primarily stem from cost efficiency and (intergenerational) risk sharing.We...

This paper outlines a risk decision support system designed to arrive at well-substantiated policy decisions using asset liability management (ALM) models. The risk decision support system explicitly takes into account that 1) there are multiple risk and return measures that are all important to...

We investigate inattention on the part of pension plan participants using a novel dataset covering savings in Sweden's Premium Pension System, data that permit direct comparison of the investment behaviors of pension and retail mutual fund investors. Unlike retail mutual fund investors, pension...

This paper examines the impact of participants' age distribution on the asset allocation of Dutch pension funds, using a unique data set of pension fund investment plans for 2007. Theory predicts a negative effect of age on (strategic) equity exposures. We observe that pension funds do indeed...

According to theory, institutional investors face both risk management and risk shifting incentives. This paper assesses the relevance of these conflicting incentives for Dutch pension funds and insurance firms over the period 1995-2009. Using a unique and extended dataset, we observe a...

Regulators often set value-at-risk (VaR) constraints to limit the portfolio risk of institutional investors. For some investors, notably pension funds, the VaR constraint is enforced over a horizon which is significantly shorter than the investment horizon of the investor. Our paper aims to...

Annuities are perceived as being illiquid financial instruments, and this has limited their attractiveness to consumers and inclusion in financial models. However, short positions in annuities can be replicated using life insurance and debt, permitting long positions in annuities to be offset,...

Recent empirical work documents large liquidity risk premiums in stock markets. We calculate the liquidity risk premiums demanded by large investors by solving a dynamic portfolio choice problem with stochastic price impact of trading, CRRA utility and a time-varying investment opportunity set....

This paper investigates the institutional investor allocations to real assets, private equity and hedge funds. Institutional investors delegate 85 percent of the asset management of their alternative investments to external managers and fund-of-funds. Institutions relying on these financial...