Housing and pension wealth are shown to be important determinants of personal sector consumption and retirement behaviour in the UK. Housing and state pension wealth have a positive effect on consumption, while private pension wealth promotes greater savings. Greater private defined benefit...

Recent studies in the empirical finance literature have reported evidence of two types of asymmetries in the joint distribution of stock returns. The Þrst is skewness in the distribution of individual stock returns, while the second is an asymmetry in the dependence between stocks: stock...

Current approaches to asset-liability management employ a sequence of distinct procedures to value liabilities and determine the asset allocation. First, a discount rate that is usually dic-tated by accounting standards is used to value liabilities. Second, the asset allocation is determined by...

This paper considers the asset-allocation strategies open to members of defined- contribution pension plans. We investigate a model that incorporates three sources of risk: asset risk and salary (or labour-income) risk in the accumulation phase; and interest-rate risk at the point of retirement....

One can consider the concept of market neutrality for hedge funds as having breadth and depth: breadth reflects the number of market risks to which a fund is neutral, while depth reflects the completeness of the neutrality of the fund to market risks. We focus on market neutrality depth, and...

The goal of the present paper is to investigate not only the dynamics of the Greek public debt, but also what are the appropriate measures required for achieving fiscal consolidation. The empirical estimation is carried out using a macroeconomic dataset spanning the period 1980-2008 and both the...

Disregarding spatial dependence can invalidate methods for analyzing cross-sectional and panel data. We discuss ongoing work on developing methods that allow for, test for, or estimate, spatial dependence. Much of the stress is on nonparametric and semiparametric methods.

The goal of the present paper is to investigate not only the dynamics of the Greek public debt, but also what are the appropriate measures required for achieving fiscal consolidation. The empirical estimation is carried out using a macroeconomic dataset spanning the period 1980-2008 and both the...