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Do portfolio shifts by the world’s largest asset owners respond procyclically to past returns, or countercyclically to valuations? And if countercyclical investment (with both market-stabilizing and return-generating properties) is a public and private good, how might asset owners be empowered to do more of it? These two questions motivate this study. Based on analysis of representative portfolios (totaling $24 trillion) for a range of asset owners (central banks, pension funds, insurers and endowments), portfolio changes typically appear procyclical. In response, I suggest a framework aimed at jointly bolstering long-term returns and financial stability should: (i) embed governance practices to mitigate ‘multi-year return chasing;’ (ii) rebalance to benchmarks with factor exposures best suited to long-term investors; (iii) minimize principal-agent frictions; (iv) calibrate risk management to minimize long-term shortfall risk (not short-term price volatility); and (v) ensure regulatory conventions do not amplify procyclicality at the worst possible times.
Do portfolio shifts by the world’s largest asset owners respond procyclically to past returns, or countercyclically to valuations? And if countercyclical investment (with both market-stabilizing and return-generating properties) is a public and private good, how might asset owners be empowered to do more of it? These two questions motivate this study. Based on analysis of representative portfolios (totaling $24 trillion) for a range of asset owners (central banks, pension funds, insurers and endowments), portfolio changes typically appear procyclical. In response, I suggest a framework aimed at jointly bolstering long-term returns and financial stability should: (i) embed governance practices to mitigate ‘multi-year return chasing;’ (ii) rebalance to benchmarks with factor exposures best suited to long-term investors; (iii) minimize principal-agent frictions; (iv) calibrate risk management to minimize long-term shortfall risk (not short-term price volatility); and (v) ensure regulatory conventions do not amplify procyclicality at the worst possible times.
Today institutional investors dominate the stock market. They hold assets valued at about 6.5 trillion - almost one fifth of the country's financial assets. Furthermore, institutional investors now own well over half of the stock in the country's 100 largest corporations, including such flagship companies as IBM, GE, Johnson & Johnson, and Mobil. Because of the tremendous influence institutional investors have on American corporations, business and government policymakers must make assumptions about how and why they make decisions - their priorities, motives, and concerns. In addition, anyone who markets to institutional investors needs to know what makes them tick. Sprinkled with candid and often colorful quotations from a variety of investment insiders, Fortune and Folly gives you a unique look at what really happens on Wall Street; facts that challenge the assumptions routinely made about the economic motivations of business behavior; new insights on pension safety and possible political influences; and economic analyses by Carolyn K. Brancato, the country's foremost expert on the economics of institutional investing.
Commodity-based sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have been at a crossroads following the recent fall in commodity prices. This paper provides a framework for commodity-based SWF management, focusing on stabilization and savings funds, by (i) examining macrofiscal linkages for SWFs; (ii) presenting an integrated sovereign asset and liability management (SALM) approach to SWF management; and (iii) applying this framework to a scenario where assets are being accumulated and to a scenario where the SWF is drawn on to cover a financing gap due to lower commodity prices.
Motivated by the tension first revealed during the global financial crisis between the domestic and international financial stability obligations of central bank reserve managers, this paper offers some reflections along four main lines. First, the paper highlights how official reserve management has evolved to mirror important aspects of private institutional investor behavior over time, and addresses the policy relevance of this convergence. Second, evidence is documented of procyclical portfolio behavior by reserve managers during the crisis, which added to the stabilization burden shouldered by central banks in reserve currency-issuing countries. Third, in appraising the evolution of related vulnerabilities since the crisis, the paper finds grounds for both cautious optimism and lingering concern, the balance of which points to an uncertain future resolution. Fourth, some potential remedies are presented to help dampen the procyclical impulses of reserve managers in future periods of international financial turbulence.
In distilling a vast literature spanning the rational— irrational divide, this paper offers reflections on why asset bubbles continue to threaten economic stability despite financial markets becoming more informationally-efficient, more complete, and more heavily influenced by sophisticated (i.e. presumably rational) institutional investors. Candidate explanations for bubble persistence—such as limits to learning, frictional limits to arbitrage, and behavioral errors—seem unsatisfactory as they are inconsistent with the aforementioned trends impacting global capital markets. In lieu of the short-term nature of the asset owner—manager relationship, and the momentum bias inherent in financial benchmarks, I argue that the business risk of asset managers acts as strong motivation for institutional herding and ‘rational bubble-riding.’ Two key policy implications follow. First, procyclicality could intensify as institutional assets under management continue to grow. Second, remedial policies should extend beyond the standard suite of macroprudential and monetary measures to include time-invariant policies targeted at the cause (not just symptom) of the problem. Prominent among these should be reforms addressing principal-agent contract design and the implementation of financial benchmarks.
In the June 2016 issue of IMF Research Bulletin, Eugenio Cerutti interviews Lars E.O. Svensson. Lars, a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, was a Visiting Scholar at the IMF. In the interview, he discusses monetary policy, financial stability, and life at the IMF. The Bulletin also features a listing of recent Working Papers, Staff Discussion Notes, and key IMF publications. The table of contents from the latest issue of IMF Economic Review is also included.

Ireland

International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department

Published: 2016-09-29

Total Pages: 26


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This Technical Note discusses the findings and recommendations made in the Financial Sector Assessment Program for Ireland in the areas of asset management and financial stability. Most of the potential avenues for domestic financial instability from Irish-domiciled money market funds and investment funds appear to be contained. The potential for destabilizing spillovers from Irish-domiciled money market and investment funds to the domestic economy appears limited. The Central Bank of Ireland has made important progress in addressing long-standing data gaps as they pertain to the asset management industry. A number of initiatives could be helpful in further strengthening industry oversight.
This paper (i) provides evidence on the procyclical investment behavior of major institutional investors during the global financial crisis; (ii) identifies the main factors that could account for such behavior; (iii) discusses the implications of procyclical behavior; and (iv) proposes a framework for sound investment practices for long-term investors. Such procyclical investment behavior is understandable and may be considered rational from an individual institution’s perspective. However, our main conclusion is that behaving in a manner consistent with longterm investing would lead to better long-term, risk-adjusted returns and, importantly, could lessen the potential adverse effects of the procyclical investment behavior of institutional investors on global financial stability.