The UK is one of the few countries in Europe that is not facing a serious pensions crisis. The reasons for this are straightforward: state pensions are among the lowest in Europe, the UK has a long‐standing funded private pension sector, its population is ageing less rapidly than elsewhere in...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to portray the valuation of financial investments as mental time travel. Design/methodology/approach: In a series of thought investments, $1 invested in an investment fund is mentally projected forward in time and then discounted back to the present –...

The huge economic significance of longevity risk for corporations, governments and individuals is beginning to be recognized and quantified. The traditional insurance route for managing this risk is capacity constrained, leaving the capital markets to provide an effective solution. We consider...

One of the most significant recent developments in the risk measurement and management area has been the emergence of value at risk (VaR). The VaR of a portfolio is the maximum loss that the portfolio will suffer over a defined time horizon, at a specified level of probability known as the VaR...

Using the AIDS model, we show that there exists for the UK a stable long-run relationship between expenditure shares on beer, cider, spirits and wine, alcohol prices, total alcohol expenditure and a range of non-economic variables relating to advertising, licensing, the employment, social class...

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...

The allocation of UK personal sector wealth across five broad asset categories (net financial wealth, housing (and durable assets) wealth, state pension wealth, private pension wealth, and human capital) is investigated using the FAIDS (financial AIDS) model. Apart from total wealth and returns,...

This paper uses survivor fan charts to illustrate the prospective density functions of future male survival rates. The fan charts are based on a version of the Cairns-Blake-Dowd model of male mortality that provides a good fit to recent mortality data for England and Wales. They indicate that...