A widely recognized paper by Colin Mayer (1988) has led to a profound revision of academicthinking about financing patterns of corporations in different countries. Using flow-of-funds datainstead of balance sheet data, Mayer and others who followed his lead found that internalfinancing is the...

At present, the question of how national pension or retirement payment systems should be organised is being hotly debated in various countries, and opinions vary widely as to what should be regarded as the optimal design for such systems. It appears to the authors of this paper that in this...