Wealth is an important source of financial well-being and investment is an important vehicle to accumulate wealth. A large body of literature has focused on analyzing the systematic differences in wealth and investment behavior across gender and marital states. This paper provides a broad...

House prices have risen quite sharply since 2000. Coming on the heels of a stock market crash, many analysts have raised the specter of collapse in house prices and have conjured up dire consequences from such a collapse. This article examines the extent of the house price rise, whether there...

Chile was the first country to introduce structural pension reform based upon a funded pillar. Implemented in 1981, Chilean pension reform inspired many other Latin American countries. During the nineties, an important literature analysed the positive and negative aspects of pension funds in...

Changes in the general level of prices and inflation have profound effects on asset prices. There are several reasons for these effects and the influence differs depending on the source of the inflation and whether it is expected or not. To understand these effects, it is important to clarify...

In Morocco, as elsewhere, banking is the principal financial sector it has the potential to contribute the most or to most severely retard economic development. But the banking industry’s potential performance is constrained by the monetary policies of the central bank. This paper reviews some...

Morocco has a distinguished reputation for opening the economy, privatization and for increasing the role of the private sector in economic development. The nation has also had well known success in achieving a high degree of price stability through a fixed and credible exchange rate that was...

Because of the several shortcomings of aggregate time-series investigations, cross-section studies outnumber the time-series analyses on the relationship between saving and Social Security. This study is the first of its kind for an emerging country that examines the subject at two major points:...

Consumer debt delinquency, as measured by being 60 or more days late in in debt payment, is an indicator of financial ill health. Using six datasets of the 1992-2007 U.S. Surveys of Consumer Finances, this study examines consumer debt delinquency over life cycle stages. Inspired by previous...

This paper uses the Malmquist Productivity Index-type DEA technique to measure the efficiency levels in Australia’s retirement income system over the period 2000-2005. It covers important segments of the industry focusing on the different fund types and analyses market dynamics under...

The U.S. mortgage loan foreclosure crisis has been called “the worst financial crisis since the great depression.” There are two distinct channels of influence of the subprime problem. The first is the rise in foreclosures that affects homeowners and the real estate industry most directly....