Pension Fund Economics and Finance

Jacob Bikker is professor of Banking and Financial Regulation, School of Economics, Utrecht University, Netherlands and senior researcher at the Strategy Department, Supervisory Policy Division, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB). His research interests include financial institutions, competition, efficiency and optimal scale. He has published many papers on efficiency and optimal scale of pension funds in journals such as Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Journal of Risk and Insurance, and Applied Economics.

• Table of Contents Introduction, J.A. Bikker Part 1: Efficiency Is there an optimal pension fund size? A scale-economy analysis of administrative and investment costs, J.A. Bikker, The impact of scale, complexity, and service quality on the costs of pension funds: A cross-country comparison, J.A. Bikker, O.W. Steenbeek, F. Torracchi Cost differences between pension funds and life insurers in providing pensions, J.A. Bikker Part 2: Investments behavior and risk-taking The eligibility of emerging market bonds for pension fund portfolios, L. Spierdijk and Z. Umar. Mean reversion of stock prices and its impact on pension fund investment policies, L. Spierdijk, J.A. Bikker. Pension fund investment policy, risk taking, ageing and the life cycle hypothesis, J.A. Bikker, D. Broeders, D. Hollanders, E. Ponds, Investor sophistication and risk taking, J. de Dreu, J.A. Bikker. Investment risk-taking of institutional investors, J.K. Gorter, J.A Bikker. Part 3: Risk-taking and regulation Measuring and explaining implicit risk sharing in defined benefit pension funds, J.A. Bikker, T. Knaap, W. Romp, (11) Utility-equivalence of pension security mechanisms, D.W.G.A. Broeders, An Chen, and Birgit Schnorrenberg