IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jda/journl/vol.45year2011issue1pp1-17.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Emerging Market Pension Funds and International Diversification

Author

Listed:
  • Wade D. Pfau

    (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan)

Abstract

Many countries are currently increasing the advanced funding of their public pension systems to improve their sustainability in the face of rapidly aging populations. When pensions are funded, the issue of asset allocation becomes of paramount importance. Standard portfolio selection theory provides a fundamental justification for international diversification: by widening the pool of potential assets, investors can potentially increase returns while possibly even reducing risks through the selection of complementary assets with low correlations. Nonetheless, many emerging market countries have regulations that strictly limit the choice of investments for pension funds, in some cases excluding international assets entirely. This paper uses modern portfolio theory to determine the optimal asset allocation for public pension systems in emerging market countries. We find that on average, about half of the portfolios of emerging market countries should be in world assets. The paper then quantifies the costs of prohibiting international diversification.

Suggested Citation

  • Wade D. Pfau, 2011. "Emerging Market Pension Funds and International Diversification," Journal of Developing Areas, Tennessee State University, College of Business, vol. 45(1), pages 1-17, July-Dece.
    • Handle: RePEc:jda:journl:vol.45:year:2011:issue1:pp:1-17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_developing_areas/v045/45.pfau.html
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kariastanto, Bayu, 2011. "Should the Indonesian pension funds invest abroad?," MPRA Paper 33581, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Wenxin Du & Jesse Schreger, 2016. "Local Currency Sovereign Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(3), pages 1027-1070, June.
    3. Gudjonsson Jon & Hougaard Jensen Svend E., 2023. "Pension Funds and Financial Stability: The Case of the UK Gilt Crisis," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Sciendo, vol. 58(3), pages 155-159, June.
    4. Ajantha Kumara & Wade Pfau, 2013. "Would emerging market pension funds benefit from international diversification: investigating wealth accumulations for pension participants," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 319-335, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    asset allocation; emerging markets; pensions; international diversification;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jda:journl:vol.45:year:2011:issue1:pp:1-17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Abu N.M. Wahid (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cbtnsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.