The eurozone has a single short-term nominal interest rate, but monetary policy conditions measured by real short-term interest rates varied substantially across countries in the period 2003-2010. We use this cross-country variation in the (local) tightness of monetary policy to examine its...

The eurozone has a single short-term nominal interest rate, but monetary policy conditions measured by real short-term interest rates varied substantially across countries in the period 2003-2010. We use this cross-country variation in the (local) tightness of monetary policy to examine its...

This paper examines whether policymakers, economists at the Israeli Finance Ministry, act in their personal pension decisions in accordance with the rational behaviour assumptions underlying the pension policies they advance. We find that while economists' decisions regarding three other...

We study reputational herding in financial markets in a laboratory experiment. In the spirit of Dasgupta and Prat (2008), career concerns are introduced in a sequential asset market, where wages for investors are set by subjects in the role of employers. Employers can observe investment...

We analyze the effect of means-tested benefits on annuitization decisions. Most industrialized countries provide a subsistence level consumption floor in old age, usually in the form of means-tested benefits. The availability of such means-tested payments creates an incentive to cash out...

The 2008-2009 global financial crisis has raised new questions about the relationship between equity fund flows and stock market returns. This paper analyses it using US monthly data over the period 2000:1-2015:08. A VAR-GARCH(1,1)-in-mean model with a BEKK representation is estimated, and a...

This paper examines the performance of 358 European diversified equity mutual funds controlling for gender differences. Fund performance is evaluated against funds' designated market indices and representative style portfolios. Consistently with previous studies, no significant differences in...

Actively managed Swedish equity mutual funds outperform the market in 1993‐2001 but have negative gross and net excess returns of ‐0.18 and ‐1.47 per cent per year in 2002‐2013. Across funds, there is no correlation between activism and return in the later period. Returns show little or...

It has been argued that increased life expectancy raises the rate of return on education, causing a rise in the investment in education followed by an increase in lifetime labor supply. Empirical evidence of these relations is rather weak. Building on a lifecycle model with uncertain longevity,...

We explore the benefits of intergenerational risk-sharing through both private funded pensions and via the public debt. We use a multi-period overlapping generations model with a PAYG pension pillar, a funded pension pillar and a government. Shocks are smoothed via the public debt and variations...