Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T05:06:10.090Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Effective and Ethical Institutional Investment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

A. Asher
Affiliation:
Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Private Bag 3, WITS 2050, South Africa. Tel: +27-11(0)-716-2610; Fax: +27-11(0)-339-6640; E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Those with responsibility for the assets of institutional investors have a fiduciary duty to attempt to earn the best possible risk adjusted returns and to comply with ethical standards. A satisfactory resolution of these, and other, conflicting demands requires a coherent intellectual framework. Such a framework can be based on a traditional scheme that analyses the various components of profit in terms of the requirements of justice. The framework provides a basis for discussing the major challenges facing the institutional investors. These relate to their role in rational asset selection, effective corporate governance, job creation and the minimisation of environmental impact.

Type
Sessional meetings: papers and abstracts of discussions
Copyright
Copyright © Institute and Faculty of Actuaries 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anonymous (1982). An economic and legal analysis of union representation on corporate boards of directors. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 130, 919–956.Google Scholar
Baumol, W. J. (1993). Entrepreneurship, management and the structure of payoff. M.I.T Press, Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar
Bayne, D.C. (1986). The philosophy of corporate control. Loyola University Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Berger, P.L. (1963). Invitation to sociology: a humanistic perspective. Penguin, Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Berle, A.A. & Means, G.C. (1968). The modem corporation and private property (3rd ed.). Harcourt, Brace and World.Google Scholar
Branson, D.M. (1993). Corporate governance. Michie, Charlottesville.Google Scholar
Bruyn, S.T. (1987). The field of social investment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calpers (1995). Why corporate governance today? A Policy Statement, California Public Employees' Retirement System, Sacramento.Google Scholar
Charkham, J.P. (1994). Keeping good company: a study of corporate governance in five countries. Clarendon, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coase, R.H. (1960). The problem of social cost. Journal of Law and Economics 3, 135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coffee, J.C. (1991). Liquidity vs control: the institutional investor as corporate monitor. University of Columbia Law Review, 91(6), 12781368.Google Scholar
Coggin, T.D., Fabozzi, F.T. & Rahman, S., (1993). The investment performance of U.S. equity fund managers: an empirical investigation. Journal of Finance, 43(3), 10391055.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crystal, G.S. (1992). In search of excess: the overcompensation of American executives. Norton, New York.Google Scholar
Day, J.G. & Jamieson, A.T. (1975). Institutional investment. Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, London.Google Scholar
Day, N., Green, S.J. & Plymen, J. (1994). Investment-assessing a managers skill and monitoring of risks. J.I.A. 478, 69103.Google Scholar
Dinenis, E. & Scott, A. (1993). What determines institutional investment — an examination of pension funds in the 1980s. Oxford Economic Papers New Series 45.2, 292310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Roover, R. (1958). The concept of a just price: theory and economic policy. Journal of Economic History 18(4), 418434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drucker, P.F. (1977), Management. Pan, London.Google ScholarPubMed
Drucker, P.F. (1985). The changing world of the executive. Times Books, New York.Google Scholar
Drucker, P.F. (1991). Reckoning with the pension fund revolution. Harvard Business Review March/April, 1991, 106.Google Scholar
Elliot, T.S. (1934), ‘The rock’, Faber and Faber, London. (Can normally be found in collections as one of the ‘Choruses from the rock’).Google Scholar
Estrin, S. (1989). Profit sharing, motivation and company performance in making the economy work. Shields, J. (ed.), Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Fama, E.F. (1980). Agency problems and the theory of the firm. Journal of Political Economy 88, 288307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, R.H., Gilovich, T. & Regan, D.T. (1993). Does economics inhibit cooperation? Journal of Economic Perspectives 7.2, 159171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, M. (1987). Fair is free. In The essence of Friedman. Hoover Institution Press, Stanford.Google Scholar
Fuller, R.J., Huberts, L.C. & Levinson, M.J. (1993). Returns to e/p strategies, higgledy-piggledy growth, analysts' forecast errors and omitted risk factors. Journal of Portfolio Management 19(2), 1334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilson, R.J. & Kraakman, R. (1991). Reinventing the outside director; an agenda for institutional investors. Stanford Law Review 43, 863906.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvard Business Review (1991). A new compact for owners and directors. July/August, 1991, 141143.Google Scholar
Kaufman, A., Zacharias, L. & Karson, M.J. (1995). Managers vs owners: the struggle for corporate control and American democracy. Oxford University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Knight, F.H. (1921). Risk, uncertainty and profit. Houghton Mifflin, Boston.Google Scholar
Knowlton & Millstein (1987). Can the board of directors help The American Corporation to earn the immortality it holds so dear? Unknown.Google Scholar
Knox, D. & Prowse, R. (1989). The measurement of invesment performance. T.I.A.A. II, 10601088.Google Scholar
Leeman, M.G. (1982). Socially desirable investments, contractual savings institutions and the redistribution of income. Transactions of the Actuarial Society of South Africa IX (II), 92122.Google Scholar
Le Grand, J. (1991). Equity and choice: an essay in economics and applied philosophy. Harper Collins, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loescher, S.M. (1984). Bureaucratic measurement, shuttling stock shares and shortened time horizons: implications for economic growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Business 24.4, 823.Google Scholar
Lowenstein, L. (1988). What's wrong with Wall Street: short-term gain and absentee shareholder. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.Google Scholar
Lowenstein, L. (1991). Sense and nonsense in corporate finance. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.Google Scholar
Lucas, J.R. (1980). On justice. Clarendon Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Mandel, E. (1962). Marxist economic theory. Merlin Press, London.Google Scholar
Meek, R.L. (1973). Studies in the labour theory of value. Lawrence & Wishart, London.Google Scholar
Miller, M.H. (1991). Financial innovations and market volatility. Blackwell, Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar
Miller, M.H. & Modigliani, F. (1961). Dividend policy, growth and the valuation of shares. Journal of Business 34.4, 411432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monks, R.A.G. & Minow, N. (1995). Corporate governance. Blackwell, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Moore, P.G. (1972). Mathematical models in portfolio selection. J.I.A. 98, 103148.Google Scholar
O'Barr, W.M. & Conley, J.M. (1992). Fortune and folly: the wealth and power of institutional investing. Business One, Irwin, Homewood, IllinoisGoogle Scholar
Olson, M. (1965). The logic of collective action: public goods and the theory of groups. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ostrom, E. (1991). Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Polachek & Siebert. (1995). The economics of earnings, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal knowledge. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.Google Scholar
Pound, J. (1993). The rise of the political model of corporate governance and control. New York Law Review 68(5), 1003–71.Google Scholar
Pound, J. (1995). Corporate governance. Harvard Business Review March/April, 1995, 89.Google Scholar
Ramsay, C.M. (1993). Loading gross premiums for risk without using utility theory. T.S.A. XLV, 305350.Google Scholar
Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Belkup, Cambridge, Mass.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, S.A. (1973). The economic theory of agency: the principal's problem. American Economic Review 58.2, 134.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, J.A. (1943). Capitalism, socialism and democracy. George Allen & Unwin, London.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, J.A. (1961). The theory of economic development. Oxford University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Seabright, P. (1993). Managing local commons: theoretical issues. Journal of Economic Perspectives 7.4, 113134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Second Fimag Asset Liability Convention (1995). Risk and its management in financial institutions. B.A.J. 2, 373392.Google Scholar
Shand, A.H. (1990). Free market morality: the political economy of the Austrian school. Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Simon, H.A. (1979). Rational decision making in organizations. American Economic Review, 69(4), 493513.Google Scholar
Simon, H.A. (1983). Reason in human affairs. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Smith, V.L. ( 1994). Economics in the laboratory. Journal of Economic Perspectives 8(1), 113139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stigler, G.J. (1982). The economist as a preacher. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Tullock, G. (1993). Rent seeking. Edward Elgar, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Von Winterfeldt, D. & Edwards, W. (1986). Decision analysis and behavioural research. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Weitzman, M.L. (1989). The case for profit-sharing in making the economy work. Shields, J. (ed.), Macmillan, London.Google Scholar
Wilkie, A.D. (1995). More on a stochastic asset model for actuarial use. B.A.J. 1, V, 777964.Google Scholar
Williamson, O.E. (1984). Corporate governance. Yale Law journal, 11971230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar