Essays in Pension Plan Investment and Choices PDF Download

Author: Tongxuan Yang
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Author: Ashok Thomas
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Category :
Languages : en
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Author: Youngkyun Park
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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This dissertation studies underfunding in defined benefit (DB) pension plans and firms' contribution behavior, 401(k) plan participant investments in lifecycle funds under plan sponsors' initiative, and fund commonalities within mutual fund families. Responding to the recent decline in DB pension funding, firms have increased pension contributions to their underfunded plans. In the first essay I empirically examine firms' contribution behavior to underfunded DB plans and funding choice for pension contributions. I find that firms reveal different sensitivities of pension contributions to underfunding across aggregate funding levels. Furthermore, at a lower funding level firms have the greater sensitivity of pension contributions to underfunding and significantly utilize the tax deductibility of pension contributions. As for a funding choice to fund pension deficits, firms use debt financing at a low funding level, but utilize internal funding by decreasing capital expenditures at a lower funding level. Firms that use the debt financing are likely to have investment-grade credit ratings or high debt leverage, while firms that use the internal funding are likely to be high-levered ones. Recently lifecycle funds have rapidly grown in self-directed retirement plans. Despite the increasing popularity among plan sponsors and participants, there are few empirical studies on lifecycle funds. In the second essay, I examine the recent lifecycle fund adoption behavior of 401(k) plan participants from 2004 to 2006. I find that the likelihood of participants changing an investment strategy to adopt lifecycle funds is not significantly affected by participant demographic characteristics, but by participant account and plan design features. This study extends our understanding of 401(k) plan participants' investment behavior by finding (1) that the substitution of lifecycle funds for balanced funds, as well as the designation of lifecycle funds as a plan default, strongly affect participants' investments in lifecycle funds and (2) that balanced fund holdings of participants are negatively associated with their lifecycle fund investments. Mutual funds account for a significant portion of household financial assets and retirement assets. An understanding of characteristics of mutual funds is crucial to fund investors--especially those whose retirement nest eggs are in mutual funds. In the final essay, I examine the impacts of fund commonalities within mutual fund families on fund characteristics in terms of return residual correlations and fund operating expenses. As fund commonalities within a fund family, I focus on common stock holdings and common management of funds. I find that common stock holdings and an existence of a common manager of funds are positively related to return residual correlations, but negatively related to fund operating expenses. This finding suggests that when investors select low-cost equity funds within a family, they should be aware that there exists an investment risk that the fund commonalities that lower fund operating expenses may additionally increase return correlations of the funds.

Author: Henry M. McMillan
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Category : Pensions
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Author: Pablo Castaneda
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Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Abstract: Social security represents a fertile territory to be explored with the tools of modern finance, as social security systems in general affect the savings decisions of individuals in non trivial ways. This dissertation studies three issues of social security using the tools of continuous-time finance. All these issues are heavily motivated by the Chilean experience in the design of unemployment insurance and pension systems based on individual accounts. The first chapter deals with the incentives embedded in the compensation scheme of a risk averse portfolio manager. The interest in this case is placed on how the compensation scheme changes the investment decisions of the portfolio manager. Using a compensation scheme based on a benchmark portfolio to define the penalties and bonuses of the scheme, it is shown that the scheme motivates the portfolio manager to imitate the investment strategy of the benchmark portfolio whenever this helps the manager to either obtain a bonus or avoid a penalty. The second chapter focuses on the optimal design of benchmark portfolios. The analysis is carried out in the context of a classical Merton type portfolio choice problem. In particular, two related portfolio choice problems are studied, one dealing with the concerns of a representative worker (e.g., unemployment risk), and a second one dealing with the concerns of the portfolio manager in charge of a solidarity fund that finances the payment of a top-up monetary benefit to workers. The results suggest that the benchmark portfolio of the solidarity fund should take into account the optimal investment strategy of the representative worker's problem as the latter represents the funded portion of the liabilities of the former. The third and final chapter focuses on the long term assessment of the financial risk in a defined contribution pension system. In particular, it analyzes a case in which the competitive incentives dissociate the investment objectives of the portfolio manager from those of the pension fund member. The results suggest that the common association between risk and stock volatility may be misleading.

Author: Julia Le Blanc
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Author: Hui-Ju Tsai
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Category : Asset allocation
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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This dissertation contains two essays on the optimal portfolio decision for long-term investors. The first essay studies the optimal asset allocation for long-horizon investors with non-tradable labor income when multiple risky asset returns are predictable. It finds that more risk-averse investors hold a higher bond/stock ratio in their risky portfolios when labor income is positively correlated with stock return or independent of risky asset returns, but the reverse is true when labor income is positively correlated with bond return. The allocation to stock inherits the inverted U-shaped pattern of labor income growth with respect to expected time until retirement. These results suggest that popular recommendations of investment advisors that more conservative investors should hold a higher bond/stock ratio and that the portfolio allocation to stock should equal 100 minus age may both lack theoretical justification. In the out-of-sample performance test, the dynamic portfolio shows the highest mean returns and Sharpe ratio than two benchmark portfolios, justifying the economic significance of incorporating the time-variation of investment opportunities and nontradable labor income into investors' portfolio choice. The second essay studies employees' optimal portfolio in their defined contribution pension plans. Assuming a discrete time model with predictable risky asset returns, the essay finds that the employees' optimal portfolio decision can be greatly affected by the employees' time to retirement, risk preference, contribution rate as well as the correlation between labor income and asset returns. Performance test shows that the gains from adopting the dynamic portfolio strategy relative to several benchmark strategies, including the 1/n rule, the optimal static strategy with and without the consideration of asset return predictability, all stock strategy, and all company stock strategy, are economically significant and the economic gain increases with employees' risk aversion. The empirical evidence that employees invest significantly in their company stock in pension plans is difficult to be justified, even after the consideration of short-sale constraints, higher expected company stock return, employees' familiarity with their company, and employers' exclusive match policy. Over allocation to company stock can be very costly, especially to conservative employees.

Author: Leslie Ann Muller
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Category : Individual retirement accounts
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Author: Joseph Clark
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Category : Pension trusts
Languages : en
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Author: Finagnon Antoine Dedewanou
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Category :
Languages : en
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Résumé en anglais