Ageing and Financial Stability

Abstract: Although the precise details are subject to major uncertainty, it seems likely that the process of population ageing will involve major shifts in financing, which may give rise to financial turbulence and systemic risk. The locus and scale of these effects will also depend on the predominant approach to retirement income provision. It is argued that the financial-stability risks arising from continuing with unsustainable pay-as-you-go systems would be more threatening than those arising from funding. Fiscal crises can have incalculable consequences for private financial markets, while pension funding involves more an adaptation by regulatory authorities to a more securitised and institutionalised financial system, that is likely to develop in any case. Concerning policy, for social security, the key issue is reform, so that the fiscal difficulties and their consequences for financial stability foreshadowed above do not arise. For institutional investors involved in funding, policy issues arising include the need for prudent person asset regulation, absence of guarantees generating moral hazard and international diversification of institutional portfolios, so that they are less dependent on the performance of the domestic economy than would otherwise be the case. Banks would not be immune to the side-effects of the various patterns ageing will generate, and an awareness of such risks as well a

Are governmental culture departments important? : an empirical investigation

There are many claims that the involvement of national governments with the cultural policy sector tends to err towards being undertaken reluctantly and with relatively low levels of practical support (Gray, 2009; McCall, 2009; Mulcahy, 2006; Rindzeviciute, 2008; Wyszomirski, 1999). Such a position for national governments can be explained as being a consequence of political choices to avoid accusations of state censorship or manipulation, or a lack of political significance being attached to the policy sector in comparison with such matters as the economy, foreign affairs, health, education or trade (Gray, 2002). Despite such claims, however, there is no doubt that national governments have become increasingly active in the field of cultural policy since the late-1950s/early-1960s (see, for example, Duelund, 2003 on Scandinavia; Craik, 2007 on Australia; and Looseley, 1995 on France) with the creation of new government departments with responsibility for culture, or the re-naming of existing departments to incorporate an explicit reference to 'culture' as part of their remit (see Gray, 2000 on Britain; the Finnish Ministry of Education will be re-titled the Ministry of Education and Culture in early 2010)