In this paper, we identify cross-sectional anomalies in excess returns of industrial bonds at the issuer and secondary market levels, and find that liquidity, risk, and historical return variables can generate cross-sectional excess returns that cannot be explained by traditional bond factors....

A commonly-accepted retirement goal for a healthy pension is for it to sustain the relatively higher standard-of-living of the latter part of one’s working life throughout retirement. A recent innovation implemented by Brazil in January 2023 might provide a solution to the pension challenges...

At a 2019 retirement security conference in Brazil, one of the authors proposed that Brazil introduce a low-cost, low-risk, simple and liquid bond innovation: “SeLFIES”—Standard of Living indexed, Forward-starting, Income-only Securities. SeLFIES would serve as the relative safe asset for...

There is an annuity puzzle in that the actual allocation by individuals to annuities is low. Longevity bonds, to hedge overall economy-wide mortality risk, have been proposed, but these bonds have challenges and the proponents have not shown how governments are hedged. This paper recommends that...

There is a growing retirement crisis and most of the focus has been on the fact that individuals are not saving enough for retirement, may not have access to pension schemes, or are financially illiterate. However, the bigger issue might be that the assets/financial products available to...

Financial illiteracy is widespread and leads to bad financial decisions (high debt, insufficient savings). Individuals cannot answer basic questions about inflation, compounding, and diversification. While financial literacy can be enhanced, are individuals teachable, and if so, what should they...

The green bond market has been growing rapidly worldwide in recent years. This paper investigates the role of green bonds in asset allocation considering Chinese financial markets. We use CoVaR to examine the risk spillovers between green bonds and stock-bond markets, finding that green bonds...

There is an annuity puzzle in that despite the welfare gains to individuals and society from consumers purchasing annuities, the actual allocation to these instruments by individuals is very low. Many explanations have been provided including adverse selection, complexity and inflexibility of...