It is well appreciated that demographic trends threaten the integrity of continental European systems of social security. For France, these trends imply a long term financial crisis as well as a crisis of confidence in national economic and social institutions. The payment of social security...

In an era of population aging and increasing fiscal pressures on nation-states, pension reserve funds have been mooted as effective investment vehicles for realizing future liabilities and achieving some balance between generations. Nonetheless, concerns have been raised that partisan political...

Saving for retirement is fraught with risk and uncertainty. For those not privileged by participation in a defined benefit pension plan, the issue is made complex and problematic by the failure of inherited decision rules: the options available are variable in terms of their costs and possible...

For many OECD countries, workplace pensions have been an important mechanism for supplementing state-sponsored social security. Notwithstanding significant differences between developed economies in the significance attached to workplace pensions, provision has been typically encouraged through...

Seminal papers on the size of the firm emphasise the benefits of in-sourcing over outsourcing services from the market. This provides a rationale for the development of large firms, especially in circumstances of market risk and uncertainty as to the price and quantity of available services....

Based on the seminal paper by Ronald Coase and subsequent work by Oliver Williamson, Oliver Hart and others, explanations for the existence of firms typically hinge upon the advantages of internal coordination over the purchase of market services. In recent years, the standard theory of the...

Contract is crucial for governing the relationships between asset owners and the many types of agents that underpin the production of financial services. In this paper, we distinguish between discrete contracts for financial services and asset management contracts that are better described as...

US state and local public employee retirement systems (PERS) utilise various models of contract with distinctive features in their form and substantive content in relation to industry norms. These models differ between states, within states, and even between PERS within major metropolitan areas....

The Norwegian Government Pension Fund-Global is one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds and is one of the most transparent institutions of its kind. It also has an explicit mission aimed at integrating long-term investment with a two-sided ethical commitment: to corporate engagement...

It is widely observed that being in the market gives financial traders access to knowledge and information not available to remote traders. A truism of the geography of finance, it is also a perspective that can shed light on the interaction between market location, global financial movements,...