NBER Publications by Jules van Binsbergen

We study the impact of regulations on the investment decisions of a defined benefits pension plan. We assess the influence of ex ante (preventive) and ex post (punitive) risk constraints on the gains to dynamic, as opposed to myopic, decision making. We find that preventive measures, such as Value-at-Risk constraints, tend to decrease the gains to dynamic investment. In contrast, punitive constraints, such as mandatory additional contributions from the sponsor when the plan becomes underfunded, lead to very large utility gains from solving the dynamic program. We also show that financial reporting rules have real effects on investment behavior. For example, the current requirement to discount liabilities at a rolling average of yields, as opposed to at current yields, induces grossly subop...

We study a decentralized investment problem in which a CIO employs multiple asset managers to implement and execute investment strategies in separate asset classes. The CIO allocates capital to the managers who, in turn, allocate these funds to the assets in their asset class. This two-step investment process causes several misalignments of objectives between the CIO and his managers and can lead to large utility costs on the part of the CIO. We focus on i) loss of diversification ii) different appetites for risk, iii) different investment horizons, and iv) the presence of liabilities. We derive an optimal unconditional linear performance benchmark and show that this benchmark can be used to better align incentives within the firm. The optimal benchmark substantially mitigates the utility...