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Behavioral finance research has almost exclusively investigated the decision making of lay individuals, mostly ignoring more sophisticated institutional investors. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the relatively unexplored field of investment decisions made by pension fund trustees, an important subset of institutional investors, and identify future avenues of further exploration.

This paper starts by setting out the landscape in which pension fund trustees operate and make their decisions, followed by a literature review of the extant behavioral finance research applicable to similar situations.

Despite receiving training and accumulating experience in financial markets, these are limited and sparse; therefore, pension fund trustees are unlikely to be immune from behavioral biases. Trustees make decisions in groups, are heavily reliant on advice and make decisions on behalf of others. Research in those areas has uncovered many inefficiencies. It is still unknown how this specific context can affect the psychological effects on their decisions.

Given how much influence trustees’ decisions have on asset allocation and by extension in financial markets, this is a surprising state of affairs. Research in behavioral finance has had a marked influence on policy in the past and so we anticipate that exploring the decisions made within pension funds may have wide ramifications for the industry.

As far as the authors are aware, no behavioral research has empirically tested pension fund trustees’ decisions to investigate how the combination of group decisions, advice and surrogacy influence their decisions and, ultimately, the sustainability of our pensions.

While recently introduced EU regulation on the statutory audit of public interest entities (PIEs) aims to improve audit competition and quality, its success and impact depends on the definition of a PIE applied across the various EU Member States. In the UK, even though little is known about their auditing choices, these changes will not apply to most private companies despite their importance to the wider economy. The purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth analysis of the private company audit market and examine the lobbying behaviour of the accounting profession around the definition of a PIE in the UK.

Using a large panel of independent private company audits in the UK and a textual analysis of submitted comment letters to a government consultation on the new regulation, this paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the audit market for private companies by measuring supplier concentration using four different measures of market share, and of the lobbying behaviour of the accounting profession.

There are two main findings. First, the private company audit market is characterised by low auditor switching rates along with a tight oligopoly of the largest independent private company audits maintained by the Big Four audit firms. Second, the lobbying behaviour of accounting and audit firms sought, and succeeded, to limit the scope of the definition of a PIE in the UK, consistent with the theoretical predictions of monopoly capitalism and the theory of professions.

The paper shows that the definition and scope of a PIE needs revisiting both within the UK and across all EU Member States, with a view to including more of these economically important private companies and highlights the policy challenge of increasing competition and choice in a concentrated audit market.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight a number of issues surrounding the sovereign wealth investment activities of the Chinese Government in Africa.

The paper employs a case study approach, bringing together various news articles and reports from around the world to build a picture of China's investment activities.

The paper finds that the reach of the Chinese Government is expanding rapidly beyond the narrow investments made thus far by China Investment Corporation. Through a wide‐ranging programme of investment through Chinese State Owned Enterprises the Chinese Government is securing substantial amounts of oil, mineral and arable land, with much of this coming from Africa.

The paper is a case study and as such is illustrative.

The current focus of the debate on sovereign wealth needs to be widened to take account of the other ways in which sovereign wealth is being invested.

This paper is believed to be the first to discuss this important issue.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight some of the political aspects of sovereign wealth fund investment.

The paper employs a case study approach, bringing together various news articles and reports from around the world to build a picture of the key events surrounding the Temasek acquisition of Shin Corp.

The paper finds that the deal between Temasek and Shin Corp. was complex as foreign ownership is limited in Thailand. To add further controversy to the deal, the ultimate owner of Shin Corp. was former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Consequently, the controversy surrounding the deal and sensitive nature of the sale caused significant political turmoil in Thailand, and in some measure contributed to the military coup that finally ousted Thaksin Shinawatra.

The paper is a case study and as such is illustrative.

The case highlights the potential fallout from sovereign wealth fund investment as a result of acquiring strategic assets.

To the best of the author's knowledge, the paper presents the first discussion of this important issue.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of the passage of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) on a number of governance and governance‐related characteristics, such as board structure and committee composition, as well as the effect of those changes (if any) on both accounting performance and company value.

The paper derives its results using a series of statistical analyses performed on the universe of firms comprising the S&P 500 index. To better gauge the effect of governance changes on firm performance, it uses four different performance measures.

The paper finds that as a direct consequence of the passage of SOX, the fraction of outsiders on corporate boards and all major board committees has gone up significantly. In addition, total chief executive officer compensation relative to sales as well as the amount of illegal insider trading (measured by a proxy based on the abnormal profits derived from insider trades) have declined. Finally, board size has declined marginally. None of these changes, however, is associated with any improvement in corporate performance or value.

The paper contributes to the brewing debate on the usefulness of SOX regulations. It examines several performance and governance‐related variables that have been previously overlooked. In addition, unlike most previous studies that look at the effect of SOX on governance, or valuation, the paper controls for the incremental effect of stock exchange regulations.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed overview of the China Investment Corporation (CIC) and its structure, investment activities and possible future investments.

This paper uses a case study approach and builds up a picture of sovereign wealth globally and then focuses on the CIC and issues surrounding the fund.

The key implications from the research are that Asian sovereign wealth is going to be increasingly important in global investment. The CICs investment strategy is evolving and becoming evermore sophisticated. As the fund grows this will result in increased demand for local financial services and expertise and so where representative offices are located will impact on those financial centers.

Future research should expand the scope of the analysis to include other sovereign wealth funds and try to map out a comprehensive picture of sovereign wealth around the world.

This is one of the first papers to look at sovereign wealth and is believed to be the first paper to analyze Asian sovereign wealth and the CIC.

The purpose of this paper is to review the issues, difficulties, importance for public policy and current initiatives associated with developing a more comprehensive national accounting framework in relation to public and private sector investments in intangible assets.

The paper analyses and evaluates the most salient statistics on intangible asset investments and the implications for public and private sector policy makers.

The UK economy has a high representation of firms and activities that invest in intangible assets that are not traditionally included in national accounts and that their exclusion has a significant impact on the UK's apparent growth and productivity performance.

The paper discusses a range of measurement and other difficulties in significantly developing a comprehensive national accounting framework that fully incorporates the impact of intangible asset investments upon national growth and productivity metrics.

This paper aims to consider the impact of modernizing payments systems within emerging economies.

Focuses on the Tanzanian experience and highlights a number of important issues that emerging economies face in undertaking such reforms. The results are based on a survey of the banking sector in Tanzania.

Many participants have experienced increases in efficiency, such as faster transaction speeds, quicker settlement times, and a reduction in errors and fraudulent transactions. However, the Tanzanian case has also highlighted the importance of sufficient legal reform for both the banking sector and their customers. Finally, the findings show that clear roles for participants and well‐defined rules and regulations are essential for effective payments systems.

The paper adds value as it considers the impact of banking reform and modernization of payments systems from the perspective of the participants within the industry. The findings will be of value to those in the banking sector in emerging economies and gives useful insights into the Tanzanian experience.