The shift from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) is pervasive among pension funds, due to demographic changes and macroeconomic pressures. In DB all risks are borne by the provider, while in plain vanilla DC all risks are borne by the beneficiary. For DC to provide income...

Defined-benefit (DB) pension funds, which are often underfunded, rely on the legal obligation of their sponsor to secure pension rights. This paper is the first to solve the optimal portfolio choice problem of pension funds taking into account the risk on the sponsor's guarantee, and we show...

The existing literature deals with the optimal investment strategy of defined benefit (DB) or defined contribution (DC) pension plans. This paper's objective is to compare the optimal policies of different types of pension plans. This is done by first defining an original framework, which is...

Analyzing the options embedded within pension plans constitutes this paper's first objective. Contingent claims emerge when decomposing the pension scheme payoffs or in the form of defined benefit or defined contribution plan guarantees. A valuation exercise is proposed in a second step, applied...

In this paper we study the optimal management of an aggregated pension fund of defined benefit type, in the presence of a stochastic interest rate. We suppose that the sponsor can invest in a savings account, in a risky stock and in a bond, with the aim of minimizing deviations of the unfunded...

Researchers have used stylized facts on asset prices and trading volume in stock markets (in particular, the mean reversion of asset returns and the correlations between trading volume, price changes and price levels) to support theories where agents are not rational expected utility maximizers....

Investors assign part of their funds to asset managers that are given the task of beating a benchmark. The risk management department usually imposes a maximum value of the tracking error volatility (TEV) in order to keep the risk of the portfolio near to that of the selected benchmark. However,...

Markowitz’s (1952) portfolio theory has permeated financial institutions over the past 50 years. Assuming that returns are normally distributed, Markowitz suggests that portfolio optimization should be performed in a mean-variance framework. With the emergence of hedge funds and their...

This article discusses the theoretical analysis and practical application of the model of semideterministic multiperiod immunization, used in the management of assets and liabilities. The emphasis is on the main theorems, underlying the theory of the immunization, the formulation of the...

Contemporary financial stochastic programs typically involve a trade-off between return and (downside)-risk. Using stochastic programming we characterize analytically (rather than numerically) the optimal decisions that follow from characteristic single-stage and multi-stage versions of such...