Skip to main content

What can history tell us about pensions

A current article in the magazine Professional Investor, 'Annuities: Lessons from the past and concerns from the future', discusses what, if anything we can learn from history about the pricing of modern annuities. Adrian Bell and Charles Sutcliffe discuss the current methods used to price annuities and warn that a shake up in the industry is needed if it is to cope with predicted demand for such products.

The authors also discuss their recent research into a form of pension, available in the middle ages, called a 'corrody'. A corrody has many common features with a modern annuity, the main difference being that the benefit was paid in kind - for instance in food and lodging; and that it could be purchased with a real estate transfer. The outcome of this work, forthcoming in the journal Explorations in Economic History, examines surviving evidence for the purchase of corrodies, and using modern pricing techniques, establishes that these were probably good business for the selling institutions.

For the full magazine article see: Professional Investor, Winter 2009/10, pp. 26-30. To read the research in full see: Adrian R. Bell and Charles Sutcliffe, ?Valuing medieval annuities: Were corrodies underpriced?',Explorations in Economic History (In press) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2009.07.002

Published 25 January 2010

You might also like

ICMA Centre research featured in Spanish Newspaper 'Expansión'

8 January 2014
Professor Adrian Bell, Head of the ICMA Centre, was featured recently in the Spanish Newspaper 'Expansión' (http://www.expansion.com/).
Research news

ICMA Centre MSc students to be granted ICMA IFID upon degree completion

29 August 2008
The ICMA Centre at Henley Business School, University of Reading is delighted to announce that students on seven of its Masters degrees will be granted the well regarded ICMA International Fixed Income and Derivatives (IFID) Certificate upon successful completion of their degree.

How do retail investors make financial decisions?

19 October 2016
£0.5m research grant awarded to Henley Business School to investigate the effects of cognitive and emotional bias on retail investment choices.
Research news