898 research outputs found
Governance of public pension funds : lessons from corporate governance and international evidence
No full textAn understanding of corporate governance theory can promote the adoption of appropriate governance tools to limit agency problems in public pension fund management. The absence of a market for corporate control hinders the translation of lessons from the private sector corporate world to public pension governance. The establishment of a fit, and proper governing body for public pension funds, thus may be even more important than the maintenance of a comparable body for private sector corporations. In particular, behavioral controls should be carefully designed.Economic Theory&Research,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Decentralization,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,National Governance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform
Contractual savings institutions and banks'stability and efficiency
No full textThe authors analyze the relationship between the development of contractual savings institutions and banks'efficiency, credit, and liquidity risks. They discuss the potential mechanisms through which the development of contractual savings institutions may affect the banking sector. They show that the development of contractual savings institutions has a significant impact on bank spreads and loan maturity. After controlling for banks'characteristics, macroeconomic factors, and more standard indicators of financial development, they show that the development of contractual savings institutions is associated with increased efficiency of the banking system and greater resilience to credit and liquidity risks.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Contractual Savings,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,Economic Theory&Research,Insurance&Risk Mitigation
Competition and performance in the Hungarian second pillar
No full textThe performance of the Hungarian second pillar since inception has been mixed. This is partly due to a less than satisfactory support for the 1997 pension reform, conservative fund portfolio distributions, the hybrid nature of the mandatory pension fund system, the segmented nature of the market in terms of costs, and a less than aggressive commitment on the part of the Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority to a low-cost, transparent, and competitive equilibrium. In the accumulation phase, the authorities would need to further promote transparency and comparability of information on costs and investment performance, facilitate migration to lower cost funds, and more generally promote competition. The regulatory framework of the payout phase needs to be overhauled before the first cohort of workers retires.Investment and Investment Climate,Economic Theory&Research,Economic Stabilization,Financial Intermediation,Settlement of Investment Disputes
Contractual savings in countries with a small financial sector
No full textCountries with small financial systems are generally small economies with a reduced dimension of institutional relationships, a greater concentration of wealth, and a relatively less independent civil service. These characteristics facilitate concentration of functions and, more generally, weak governance. Only small economies with a relatively high level of per capita income, minimum core of sound banks and insurance companies, sound and credible macroeconomic policies, and open capital accounts can benefit from the development of contractual savings. This can increase the options to obtain sound coverage against contingencies, increase the supply of long term savings, promote financial deepening, and improve financial risk management.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Insurance Law
On the Governance of Public Pension Fund Management
No full textThe author surveys the empirical
literature on the relationship between governance of public
pension fund management and investment performance. He makes
a preliminary attempt to identify good governance practices
and distill governance guidelines aimed at reducing the
political risk that is associated with central, public
pension fund management. The author highlights the need for
further work to support the development of a satisfactory
set of governance guidelines
Contractual savings, capital markets, and firms'financing choices
No full textThe authors analyze the relationship between the development and asset allocation of contractual savings and firms'capital structures. The authors develop a simple model of firms'leverage and debt maturity decisions. They illustrate the mechanisms through which contractual savings development may affect corporate financing patterns. In the empirical section, the authors show that the development and asset allocation of contractual savings have an independent impact on firms'financing choices. Different channels are identified. In market-based economies, an increase in the proportion of shares in the portfolio of contractual savings leads to a decline in firms'leverage. In bank-based economies, instead, an increase in the size of contractual savings is associated with an increase in leverage and debt maturity in the corporate sectorBanks&Banking Reform,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Environmental Economics&Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism
A conceptual framework for retirement products : Risk sharing arrangements between providers and retirees
No full textVoluntary annuity markets are, in most countries, smaller than what the theoretical and part of the empirical literature would suggest. There are both demand and supply constraints that hamper the development of annuity markets. In particular, traditional products available in most countries can require excessive minimum capital requirements for given investment opportunities available to providers. Investment and longevity risk should be shared between providers and annuitants so that supply constraints can be relaxed. Alternative annuity products, which imply risk sharing, could be backed by substantially lower capital investments or, equivalently, provided at substantially lower prices to consumers.Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Pensions&Retirement Systems,Economic Theory&Research,Non Bank Financial Institutions,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Pensions&Retirement Systems,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Non Bank Financial Institutions
Instantaneous Kinematics and Singularities of Two Types of Under-Actuated Parallel Wrists
No full textS-(nS)PU-SPU and S-(nS)PU-2SPU are two out of three types of under-actuated wrists that are generated from the “ordinary” wrists of type S-3SPU (fully-parallel wrists), by replacing a spherical pair (S) with a nonholonomic spherical pair (nS) according to the rules stated in [1]. Position analysis, controllability, and path planning of these two wrist types have been addressed and solved in two previous papers [2, 3] of this author. Their kinetostatics and singularity analysis have not been addressed, yet; and they are studied in this paper.
[1] Grosch, P., Di Gregorio, R., and Thomas, F., 2010, “Generation of under-actuated manipulators with nonholonomic joints from ordinary manipulators,” ASME J. of Mechanisms and Robotics, 2(1): 011005-(8 pages).
[2] Di Gregorio R., 2011, “Under-Actuated Nonholonomic Parallel Wrists,” In: Proc. of the 13th World Congress in Mechanism and Machine Science (IFToMM 2011), Guanajuato, México, 19-25 June, 2011, Paper No. A12-264
[3] Di Gregorio, R., 2011, “On the S-(nS)PU-SPU and S-(nS)PU-2SPU under-actuated wrists,” Procs. of the ASME 2011 International Design Engineering Technical Conference & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC/CIE 2011, August 28-31, 2011, Washington (DC, USA), Paper No.: DETC2011-47541
Contractual savings or stock market development - Which leads?
No full textThe authors study the relationship between the development of contractual savings (assets of pension funds, and life insurance companies) and non-life insurance, and, the development of stock markets (market capitalization and value traded). Their contribution lies in providing time-series evidence on a hypothesis that is very popular - but had not been substantiated - among supporters of fully funded pension systems in which funds invest large shares of their portfolios in tradable securities (equities, bonds). The literature is not clear on its assumption regarding causality between contractual savings, and capital market development. A one-way or two-way relationship is assumed, usually inter-changeably; the authors address the questions of which leads empirically. They present the evidence, including descriptive statistics, and the results of Granger causality tests, for OECD countries, and such countries as Chile, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, and Thailand. They do not present a theoretical framework, but do explain how the growth of the contractual savings sector, is thought to promote financial development. The authors find evidence in the data that causality between institutions, and markets either does not exist, or, if it exists, runs predominantly from institutions to markets. To a lesser extent, there is simultaneous causality between institutions, and markets. Furthermore, there is limited evidence that causality runsonly from markets to institutions (the only exception seems to be for non-life insurance in developing countries). Results seem to support the idea that the development of institutional investors, is likely to promote the growth of market capitalization, more than that of value traded. In developing countries, there seems to be no causality from pension funds to growth in value traded, while there is causality from life, and non-life insurance.International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Intermediation,Financial Intermediation,Contractual Savings,Insurance Law,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform
Co-authorship network dataset on psoriasis research papers from Medline database (1942-2013).
No full textA ".xlsx" file which provides data used by Gregorio González-Alcaide & collaborators in the article “Evolution of cooperation patterns in psoriasis research: co-authorship network analysis of papers in Medline (1942-2013).” The worksheet “labels” describes every variable. The worksheet “dataset” presents the following data:
PMID: PubMed Identifier for indexed documents in Pubmed used for the study. PMIDs do not change over time or during processing and are never reused.
DP: Date that the article was published.
FAU: Author name for articles published. From 2002 forward, the full author name of authors is provided, if available.
FAU-Revised: Author name after cleansing process. A standardization process of the variations in signatures from single authors was carried out. The main discrepancies we found were caused by one or more first or last names being included, the authors’ first names being either spelled out or abbreviated to the initials, and typos
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