Since January 2005, pensions in Slovakia are operated by a three-pillar system proposed by the World Bank. The paper discusses and mathematically captures principles of the pension reform in Slovakia. We also discuss the impact of the reform on the deficit of the pension system. We mainly focus...

Which investor class causes stock price anomalies? Are individual investors responsible for prices that deviate from fundamental value? We address these questions in the context of a specific anomaly, that of stock price 'bubbles.' Using data from the Australian Stock Exchange Clearinghouse...

Using a comprehensive hedge fund database, we examine the role of managerial incentives and discretion in hedge fund performance. Hedge funds with greater managerial incentives, proxied by the delta of the option-like incentive fee contracts, higher levels of managerial ownership, and the...

The rapid growth of pension systems raises the specter of market disruptions from pension plan flows. In particular, appointments and changes of fund managers by pension trustees are accompanied by large intermittent portfolio flows, mostly channeled via the upstairs market. In this article we...

Mutual funds are an important vehicle for low- and middle-income households to invest in the stock market and save for the future. The number of families investing in mutual funds has increased more than 1,000 percent, from 4.6 million households investing in mutual funds in 1980, to a high of...

Previous research has concluded that prespecified asset allocations used by many Section 529 college savings plans are not only suboptimal, but that they are also so conservative that many investors would do better by avoiding such plans entirely. Recent changes in the tax code and in the rules...

We compare institutional execution costs across the major U.S. exchanges using a sample of institutional equity orders in firms that switch exchanges. Execution costs including commissions are essentially indistinguishable across these exchanges. We also find the fraction of trading volume from...

We propose a dynamic stochastic accumulation model for determining optimal decision between stock and bond investments during accumulation of pension savings. Stock prices are assumed to be driven by the geometric Brownian motion. Interest rates are modeled by means of the Cox-Ingersoll-Ross...

I investigate the asymmetric impact of volatility risk on returns of hedge fund strategies. I compare volatility risk exposures to price risk exposures by considering the causation between implied volatility and market returns. I also investigate whether the latest financial crises have caused...

For emerging market hedge funds, funding through the yen carry trade provides the possibility of enhancing returns by funding in a low coupon currency. This study examines whether emerging market hedge funds are exposed to the value of the Japanese yen and whether this is the key exposure...