Global financial regulators are currently reflecting on the nature of the insurance business. Specifically, they are trying to classify insurance into "traditional" and "non-traditional" activities, and to distinguish them from "non-insurance" activities. Subsequently, they will seek to apply...

The extremely low long-term interest rates in capital markets, to a relevant extent induced by quantitative easing, imply significant challenges for retirement saving and the stability of households' purchasing power over the long-term. The reason is that prices for the two most important...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is in the process of re-inventing itself with bilateral and multilateral surveillance emerging as a key function. The paper analyses how IMF surveillance announcements may be influenced by political power that member countries exert at the IMF. First, we...