The floods of summer 2002 in Central Europe and China, recurrent earthquakes in Turkey and Japan and frequent hurricanes in the USA and Central America challenge the economic fundaments of the societies exposed; unexpected effects through economic, financial and political "channels" make...

We empirically study individual pension choice between two different defined benefit (DB) plans and a defined contribution (DC) plan. The DB plans differ in their contribution rates and in the way retirement benefits are calculated, as a proportion of final salary or as a proportion of lifetime...

International Asset Management (‘IAM’) is the proud sponsor of the IAM Hedge Fund Research Programme of the Financial Markets Group. Within this programme the LSE team undertakes independent research into aspects of the hedge fund industry. It is hoped that the results of this research will...

With a move away from up-front charges following the introduction of stakeholder pensions, consumers are no longer penalised for lapsing on many long-term savings policies. Nevertheless, persistency rates may still provide an (imperfect) indicator of sales quality and provide some information on...

Report of the findings of the Grant Impacts Project, commissioned by SHINE

Linear parabolic partial differential equations (PDE’s) and diffusion models are closely linked through the celebrated Feynman-Kac representation of solutions to PDE’s. In asset pricing theory, this leads to the representation of derivative prices as solutions to PDE’s. We give a number of...

One of the main problems in pension policy is to develop an institutional framework that guarantees that public and private pensions promises are kept. This paper discusses how the governance of public and private pensions is key to making such promises credible. It argues that credibility...