"Unfunded pay-as-you-go state pension schemes are financially unsustainable in Europe as elsewhere. Proponents of reform argue that, by switching to a fully funded scheme that takes advantage of the high return on assets such as equities, the solvency of the state scheme could be restored at...

This paper analyzes the variation in expected monthly stock returns for a large cross-section of U.K. companies. Using company attributes as a sorting key, the authors we form portfolios and study their returns relative to the return on the market index. They find that book to market value, and...