Papers by David J H Blake
Ieee Aerospace Conference Proceedings, 2012
Large sections of the UK population are failing to make adequate provision for their retirement, ... more Large sections of the UK population are failing to make adequate provision for their retirement, and one area where provision is notably poor is amongst people working for small and medium sized businesses. We use information gathered from interviews with individuals from a wide range of organisations active in the pensions market for these companies to shed light on the particular barriers to pension scheme participation in this sector in which over 40% of the working population is employed. We find that many finance directors are sceptical of the benefits of providing pensions for their employees and deliberately structure their pension schemes to avoid high participation rates. We also find that financial advisers and pension providers are reluctant to promote pensions in companies where they perceive the management to be unsupportive and where there is no clear profit margin. We suggest one way in which management could be motivated to encourage pension scheme participation amongst their employees.
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Housing and pension wealth are shown to be important determinants of personal sector consumption ... more 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 pension wealth encourages earlier retirement, while greater defined contribution pension wealth has the effect of delaying retirement. State pension wealth appears to have no effect on the retirement decision. Other variables relating to income, labour market and demographic status and spillovers from other sectors are also shown to be important. The consumption equation forecasts the late 1980s boom and the early 1990s slump in the UK better than other models that disregard housing and pension wealth. A particularly important cause of the boom was the huge private pension fund surpluses that accrued as a result of the stock market boom of the 1980s.
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ABSTRACT Basis risk is an important consideration when hedging longevity risk with instruments ba... more ABSTRACT Basis risk is an important consideration when hedging longevity risk with instruments based on longevity indices, since the longevity experience of the hedged exposure may differ from that of the index. As a result, any decision to execute an index-based hedge requires a framework for (1) developing an informed understanding of the basis risk, (2) appropriately calibrating the hedging instrument, and (3) evaluating hedge effectiveness. We describe such a framework and apply it to a U.K. case study, which compares the population of assured lives from the Continuous Mortality Investigation with the England and Wales national population. The framework is founded on an analysis of historical experience data, together with an appreciation of the contextual relationship between the two related populations in social, economic, and demographic terms. Despite the different demographic profiles, the case study provides evidence of stable long-term relationships between the mortality experiences of the two populations. This suggests the important result that high levels of hedge effectiveness should be achievable with appropriately calibrated, static, index-based longevity hedges. Indeed, this is borne out in detailed calculations of hedge effectiveness for a hypothetical pension portfolio where the basis risk is based on the case study. A robustness check involving populations from the United States yields similar results.
Journal of Further and Higher Education, 1998
Journal of Further and Higher Education, 1988
Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers Part Iii Power Apparatus and Systems, 1952
We estimate values-at-risk (VaR) in the accumulation phase of defined-contribution pension plans.... more We estimate values-at-risk (VaR) in the accumulation phase of defined-contribution pension plans. We examine a range of asset-return models (including stationary moments, regime-switching and fundamentals models) and a range of asset-allocation strategies (both static and with simple dynamic forms, such as lifestyle, threshold and constant proportion portfolio insurance).
Detailed side-scan sonar and gridded bathymetric surveys on continental margins reveal the existe... more Detailed side-scan sonar and gridded bathymetric surveys on continental margins reveal the existence of numerous submarine canyons. Recently published compilations of current velocities in submarine canyons indicate that alternating and undirectionaly flows often exceed 20-30 cm/sec with peak velocities ranging from 70 to 100 cm/sec. Current meters attached to the ocean floor have been lost at current velocities of 190
Abstract This paper sheds light on the source of the home country bias by considering a large pan... more Abstract This paper sheds light on the source of the home country bias by considering a large panel of UK pension funds' holdings of international equities. Both the absolute level and medium-term trends of the portfolio weights in our sample differ substantially from ...
Review of World Economics, 1993
ABSTRACT
Employee Relations, 2000
The UK is one of the few countries in Europe that is not facing a serious pensions crisis. The re... more 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 Europe and its governments have, since the beginning of the 1980s, taken measures to prevent a pension crisis developing. This article reviews the policies that have been implemented over the last two decades. It describes and analyses the defects in the Thatcher-Major governments' reforms that brought us to the current system, examines and assesses the reforms of the Blair government, and then identifies the problems that remain unresolved and how they might be addressed. Concludes with an examination of the implications of these reforms for the future of occupational pension schemes.
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Papers by David J H Blake