CESAM : The CCSO annual model of the Dutch economy

This paper presents CESAM, a macroeconometric model of the Dutch economy based on annual data. CESAM can be characterized as a Keynesian expenditure model including a neoclassical production model and a post-Keynesian financial model. This characterization holds for most of the Dutch macroeconometric models including, for instance, FREIA-KOMPAS of the Dutch Central Planning Bureau. There are, however, some interesting features that distinguish CESAM from other Dutch models: the production structure is based on a putty-clay vintage approach; the financial model is based on a system of financial accounts and is modelled using the portfolio approach; and the institutional structure of Dutch public finance is described in detail. The main objectives in using the model are to generate medium-term forecasts of the Dutch economy and to analyse economic policy

Institutional Homogeneity and Choice in Superannuation

In this analysis of institutional investor performance, two questions are addressed. First, what degree of similarity is observed within the market place for retail superannuation funds? Second, what are the implications of homogenous behaviour for member choice policy? The answers from this study are as follows: as an industry, institutional investors destroyed value for superannuation investors for the period 1991 through 2003, under-performing passive portfolio returns by around 60 basis points per annum. Moreover, we find there is a great deal of clustering around this average underperformance. It also appears as though funds have similar risk characteristics which are, on average, defensive. The findings suggest that the products offered by those competing in this market are very similar in nature, hence limiting the potency of choice policy in Australia.Superannuation, underperformance

How ordinary consumers make complex economic decisions: financial literacy and retirement readiness

This paper explores who is financially literate, whether people accurately perceive their own economic decision-making skills, and where these skills come from. Self-assessed and objective measures of financial literacy can be linked to consumers’ efforts to plan for retirement in the American Life Panel, and causal relationships with retirement planning examined by exploiting information about respondent financial knowledge acquired in school. Results show that those with more advanced financial knowledge are those more likely to be retirement-ready

Why do retail investors make costly mistakes? An experiment on mutual fund choice

There is mounting evidence that retail investors make predictable, costly investment mistakes, including underinvestment, naïve diversification, and payment of excessive fund fees. Over the past thirty-five years, however, participant-directed 401(k) plans have largely replaced professionally managed pension plans, requiring unsophisticated retail investors to navigate the financial markets themselves. Policy-makers have struggled with regulatory interventions designed to improve the quality of investment decisions without a clear understanding of the reasons for investor mistakes. Absent such an understanding, it is difficult to design effective regulatory responses. This article offers a first step in understanding the investor decision-making process. We use an internet-based experiment to disentangle possible explanations for inefficient investment decisions. The experiment employs a simplified construct of an employee’s allocation among the options in a retirement plan coupled with technology that enables us to collect data on the specific information that investors choose to view. In addition to collecting general information about the process by which investors choose among mutual fund options, we employ an experimental manipulation to test the effect of an instruction on the importance of mutual fund fees. Pairing this instruction with simplified fee disclosure allows us to distinguish between motivation-limits and cognition-limits as explanations for the widespread findings that investors ignore fees in their investment decisions. Our results offer partial but limited grounds for optimism. On the one hand, within our simplified experimental construct, our subjects allocated more money, on average, to higher-value funds. Furthermore, subjects who received the fees instruction paid closer attention to mutual fund fees and allocated their investments into funds with lower fees. On the other hand, the effects of even a blunt fees instruction were limited, and investors were unable to identify and avoid clearly inferior fund options. In addition, our results suggest that excessive, naïve diversification strategies are driving many investment decisions. Although our findings are preliminary, they suggest valuable avenues for future research and important implications for regulation of retail investing

Risk-sensitive investment in a finite-factor model

A new jump diffusion regime-switching model is introduced, which allows for linking jumps in asset prices with regime changes. We prove the existence and uniqueness of the solution to the risk-sensitive asset management criterion maximisation problem in this setting. We provide an ODE for the optimal value function, which may be efficiently solved numerically. Relevant probability measure changes are discussed in the appendix. The approach of Klebaner and Lipster (2014) is used to prove the martingale property of the relevant density processes.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figur