Mandatory pensions are a worldwide phenomenon. However, with fixed contribution rates, monthly benefits, and retirement ages, pension systems are not consistent with three long-run trends: declining mortality, declining fertility, and earlier retirement. Many systems need reform. This book gives an extensive nontechnical explanation of the economics of pension design. The theoretical arguments have three elements: * Pension systems have multiple objectives--consumption smoothing, insurance...

Mandatory pensions are a worldwide phenomenon. However, with fixed contribution rates, monthly benefits, and retirement ages, pension systems are not consistent with three long-run trends: declining mortality, declining fertility, and earlier retirement. Many systems need reform. This book gives an extensive nontechnical explanation of the economics of pension design. The theoretical arguments have three elements: * Pension systems have multiple objectives--consumption smoothing, insurance...

Of the many functions of the welfare state, two are particularly prominent: the 'Robin Hood' function - the provision of poverty relief, the redistribution of income and wealth, and the reduction of social exclusion; and the 'piggy bank' function - ensuring mechanisms for insurance and for redistribution over the life cycle. The piggy-bank function, unlike the redistributive purpose of the welfare state, has received relatively little attention, and is not widely understood. This book redr...

This topical volume tells the story of the UK debate on financing higher education, illustrating a head-on collision between the economic imperatives of student loans and regulated market forces, and the political imperative of 'free' higher education. In telling the story of the partnership of an economist and a political professional, the book offers lessons about both policy design and the politics of reform: of particular relevance to countries which have not yet addressed the issue, i...

Most higher education finance literature assumes that students cannot pledge their future earnings to finance their education in a free society. Investing in Human Capital, first published in 2004, challenges that assumption and explores human capital contracts as an alternative mechanism for financing higher education. Investing in Human Capital tracks the roots of the idea behind human capital contracts, discusses the beneficial consequences they would have on students and on higher educ...

Fang and fury penetrate the night, searching for those who will carry the light, in an elemental battle as old as time.And reckoning arrives on silent feet when modern research crosses ancient ground.In the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a research team pushes boundaries, chasing answers the modern world insists can be measured, cataloged, and controlled.But instead, they find history does not sleep in the dust. It rises ...

What was awakened cannot be ignored. In the wake of the events that shattered the silence, the boundaries between ancient guardians and the modern world continue to erode. The truths revealed in Season One were only fragments, and their consequences ripple farther than anyone anticipated. As old forces press closer to the present, alliances are tested, loyalties deepen, and the cost of standing between myth and reality becomes impossible to avoid. Some are drawn forward. Others are claimed...

With Canadian personal savings lower than ever before and household debt going through the roof, many people are in dire need of financial advice. But can a book that includes sex, zombies, pancakes, and Star Trek really help? You might be surprised. Wealthing Like Rabbits is a fun, entertaining guide to personal finance that proves sound money management doesn’t have to be painful and neither does learning about it.Combining a unique blend of humour and perspective with e...

Make simple sense of complex financial information!The high-profile accounting scandals of recent years have made one thing clear: You can't know too much about the company for which you work. What are the numbers? Where do you find them? How do they affect you and your staff?This fully revised and updated third edition of The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course: Finance for Nonfinancial Managers provides a firm grasp on what all the numbers really mean. Designed to let y...

Dream Hoarders sparked a national conversation on the dangerous separation between the upper middle class and everyone else. Now in paperback and newly updated for the age of Trump, Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard Reeves is continuing to challenge the class system in America.In America, everyone knows that the top 1 percent are the villains. The rest of us, the 99 percent?we are the good guys. Not so, argues Reeves. The real class divide is not between the upper...

Unlike most retirement planning and lifestyle books that focus on investing – or at the other end of the spectrum, on how to get the senior discount on a Grand Slam Breakfast at Denny’s – this new book from Jeff Yeager, America’s favorite cheapskate, makes the compelling case that you can have a joyous, worry-free retirement by merely spending smart and focusing on what you truly want and expect out of retirement.Combining Yeager’s loveable humor and offbeat anecdotes that have gar...

Glen Arnold is a businessman, investor and a professor of finance at Salford University. He’s the author of Corporate Financial Management, now in its fourth edition, Essentials of Corporate Financial Management, The Financial Times Guide to Value Investing, now in its second edition, and the market leading, The Financial Times Guide to Investing also in its second edition.