The report covers several types of structured finance with such capital market instruments as mortgage-backed securities, structured bond issues for infrastructure financing, securitization of small and medium enterprises (SME)-related assets, and securitization of loans to SMEs. The report also...

The dramatic events of the late 1990s, which followed a wave of financial crises going back to the early 1980s, brought to center stage the issue of financial sector policy in developing countries. Many recent books have presented a chronology and interpretation of the crises, but it is little...

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...

One of the strongest objections to personal pension plans is that they transfer investment risk to individual workers, who are then exposed to the vagaries of equity and bond markets. Using historical United States data, the authors investigate the impact of the volatility of investment returns...

The link between pension reform, and capital market development, has become a perennial question, raised every time the potential benefits, and pre-conditions of pension reform are discussed. The author asks two questions. First, what are the basic "feasibility" pre-conditions for the successful...

Most countries reforming their pension system, focus more on the accumulation phase, than on the decumulation (pay-out), because the number of beneficiaries is likely to be small initially, especially if older workers are discouraged from joining the new system. Policymakers place a priority on...

Pension reforms normally focus on the accumulation phase, plus term insurance that provides bnefits for the disabled and for dependent survivors, all of which are immediate concerns. Decumulation of the capital in workers' retirement savings accounts appears to be far in the future. But in the...

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...

Hungary is entering the fourth year of a multi-pillar pension reform that has proved popular among workers despite initially lukewarm support from the government that succeeded the reforming government, and despite the poor initial performance of capital markets because of Russia's crisis in...