Premium
Operations of a Pension Fund after the Asian Crisis: The Thai Experience *
Author(s) -
Funke Katja,
Stadtmann Georg
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
asian economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.345
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1467-8381
pISSN - 1351-3958
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8381.2004.00200.x
Subject(s) - pension , economics , pension fund , investment management , target date fund , equity (law) , finance , debt , alternative investment , financial crisis , portfolio , investment strategy , government (linguistics) , national pension , corporate governance , business , institutional investor , macroeconomics , open end fund , market liquidity , political science , transaction cost , law , linguistics , philosophy
During and after the Asian crisis, institutional investors and pension funds in Asian financial markets have been confronted with a number of difficulties effecting their performance and the way they carry out their role within the national pension system. We analyze these problems by comparing the actual investment policy of an institutional investor with an optimal investment strategy derived from the insights of modern portfolio theory. We also analyze whether the organizational set‐up of a pension fund allows it to adequately perform its role within the pension system. As an example, we examine the operations of the Thai Government Pension Fund (GPF). We find that allowing international investments and reducing restrictions on equity investments while lowering the implicit requirements for investments in government debt would allow the GPF to further diversify its investment risk and to increase its risk‐adjusted return. We also show that some changes in the governance structure of the GPF would lower the occurrence of conflicts of interest for the management and increase the efficiency of the GPF operations.