An understanding of corporate governance theory can promote the adoption of appropriate governance tools to limit agency problems in public pension fund management. The absence of a market for corporate control hinders the translation of lessons from the private sector corporate world to public...

Enforcement more than regulations, laws-on-the-books, or voluntary codes is key to effective corporate governance, at least in transition and developing countries. Corporate governance and enforcement mechanisms are intimately linked as they affect firms'ability to commit to their stakeholders,...

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...

The author analyzes the typical model for regulating investments in private pension funds. Pension reforms like those pioneered by Chile are being initiated or considered in Argentina, Bolivia, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hungary, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and elsewhere. Such reforms greatly...

Indonesia's nascent capital markets stand to benefit significantly from a thriving pension industry. Now is the time to reform the pensions system, while it has a vibrant economy, rapidly rising income, and a young and growing workforce. The author suggests three main reforms. First, to...

The author argues that public and private pillars are essential for a well-functioning pension system. Public pillars, funded or unfounded, offer basic benefits that are independent of the performance of financial markets. Since financial markets suffer from prolonged, persistent, and large...

Bolivia's bold program of pension reform involved the immediate closing down of the old pay-as-you-go system and its replacement by a defined-contribution system based on individual capitalization accounts and managed by the private sector. The pensions of the old system will be covered by the...

All of Zambia's pension schemes are deficient in design, financing, and administration. This report urges that Zambia restructure its social protection system to complement its new economic strategy. That restructuring must address such basic problems as macroeconomic fluctuations and an...

The authors combine firm-level data from the World Bank Business Environment Survey (WBES) with data on private and public credit registries to investigate whether the presence of a credit registry in a country is associated with lower financing constraints, as perceived by managers, and with...

How can one account for the puzzling behavior of insider-managers who, in stripping assets from the veryfirms they own, appear to be stealing from one pocket to fill the other? The authors suggest that such asset-stripping and failure to restructure are the consequences of interactions between...