With few exceptions, mainly in Asia, mutual funds grew explosively in most countries around the world during the 1990s. Equity funds predominated in Anglo-American countries while bond funds predominated in most of Continental Europe, and in middle-income countries. Capital market development...

The authors provide a detailed study of the Swiss pension system, analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. The unfunded public pillar is highly redistributive. It has near universal coverage, a low dispersion of benefits (the maximum public pension is twice the minimum), and no ceiling on...

Countries with small financial systems are generally small economies with a reduced dimension of institutional relationships, a greater concentration of wealth, and a relatively less independent civil service. These characteristics facilitate concentration of functions and, more generally, weak...

Many developing countries, especially in Latin America and Eastern Europe, have unfunded pay-as-you-go public pension systems that face growing financial pressures. These emanate from a weak link between contributions and benefits, from widespread evasion, and from an aging population. Chile...

What is the most cost-effective way to organize individual accounts that are part of a mandatory social security system? Defined-contribution individual account components of social security systems are criticized for being too expensive. The authors investigate the cost-effectiveness of two...

One of the main criticisms of the defined-contribution, individual-account components of social security systems is that they are too expensive. The authors investigate the cost-effectiveness of three options for constructing funded social security pillars: * Individual accounts invested in the...

To maximize the efficiency gains from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the regulatory environment for Mexican banking, insurance, and securities markets should be further harmonized with those of the more advanced and efficient Canadian and U.S. markets. The authors argue that a...

Greece and Italy initiated efforts to improve public debt management and develop their domestic debt markets respectively in the late 1970s and mid-1980s. At that time, both countries suffered from large and rapidly growing public debt, excessive reliance on short-term bills held by commercial...

Leading financial economists have proposed the use of international asset swaps (Merton 1990, Bodie and Merton 2002) as a way of efficiently achieving international diversification without eroding the level of foreign exchange reserves and weakening local market development. International asset...

Tunisia's pension system provides old age, survivorship, and disability benefits to retired and disabled workers and their dependents. It is a partially funded system based on solidarity between generations. It is designed to provide insurance against loss of income in old age, especially for...