Motivated by recent empirical work, this paper formalizes a theory of competitive savings - an arms race in household savings for mating competition that is made more fierce by an increase in the male-to-female ratio in the pre-marital cohort. Relative to the empirical work, the theory can...

This short essay surveys recent literature on the competitive saving motive and its broader economic implications. The competitive saving motive is defined as saving to improve one's status relative to other competitors for dating and marriage partners. Here are some of the key results of the...

This short essay surveys recent literature on the competitive saving motive and its broader economic implications. The competitive saving motive is defined as saving to improve one's status relative to other competitors for dating and marriage partners. Here are some of the key results of the...

The implication of increasing dependency ratios for pay-as-you-go, defined-benefit pension programmes are examined. Modifications aimed at smoothing contributions while maintaining benefits intact are analysed for both open and closed economies

We use a case study of a pension plan wishing to hedge the longevity risk in its pension liabilities at a future date. The plan has the choice of using either a customised hedge or an index hedge, with the degree of hedge effectiveness being closely related to the correlation between the value...

This paper traces the roots of collateral flow and its potential vulnerabilities in the shadow banking system to their regulatory capital treatment in the banking sector. As part of assessing the interaction of banking regulation and the shadow banking sector, it investigates the impact of bank...

The present paper argues that the present Internet conditions favour an entirely new finance model. Understood to soon supplement the existing ones (classical finance, corporate finance, and Islamic finance), it is argued that the new model will be defined by the destructive effect it is to have...

This article studies the regulatory strategies to address the potential systemic risk of hedge funds operation in financial markets. Due to the implications of the choice of regulatory strategies and instruments in terms of mitigating systemic risk, the article focuses on one critical aspect of...

This paper studies the interplay of the public-private dichotomy and the externalities argument in the context of recently enacted U.S. “Private Fund Investment Advisers Registration Act of 2010”. Having conducted a historical overview of the concept of public and private domains in...

We explore the consequences from the two regulatory frameworks Dodd-Frank and EMIR for industrial corporates. We point out that - by falling under the clearing obligation - not only the corporate's option to decide freely on its positioning within the well-known “Risk Triangle” is...