Organisation

Centre for International Finance and Regulation

Owning Institution:

University of New South Wales

Macquarie University

University of Technology Sydney

Government of Australia

Government of New South Wales

University of Sydney

University of Melbourne

Australian National University

The Centre for International Finance and Regulation (CIFR) was a Centre of Excellence operating from 2011 to 2016 to address fundamental issues affecting the Australian financial industry. CIFR’s mission was to promote financial sector vibrancy, resilience and integrity, supporting Australia as a regional financial centre through leading research and education on systemic risk, market and regulatory performance and financial market developments. CIFR funded 71 research projects, involving well over 100 researchers from domestic and international universities.

For Australia’s financial industry, CIFR provided a strategic link between academia, policy-makers, regulators and other industry participants. Now closed, the Centre's output of 148 papers are all available at this publisher page.

Working paper

What Triggers People to Save for Retirement?

29 Feb 2016

Paul Brockman,

David Michayluk

Centre for International Finance and Regulation

We investigate retirement saving decisions through interviews and a broad survey in four countries that investigates what influences changes in savings behaviour. We identify a number of previously unidentified factors that are associated with increased savings. We find that approximately 40% of the respondents in our survey would increase their retirement savings when they receive...

Working paper

Monitoring risk in the financial system using time series methods

29 Feb 2016

Piet de Jong,

Geoffrey Loudon,

Weihao Choo

Centre for International Finance and Regulation

SRISK methodology recently proposed in the literature is refined and extended. The refinement is to define systemic risk using a formalised stress testing framework including a stress function. Baseline risk and the stress risk are in terms of the ordinary and stressed expectation. Stressed expectation is expectation computed under a hypothetical stress, modelled with the...

Working paper

The effect of data availability in measuring fund managers after-tax alphas

29 Feb 2016

Zhe Chen,

David Gallagher,

Geoffrey J. Warren

Centre for International Finance and Regulation

We examine potential sources of measurement error when evaluating the after-tax performance of fund managers based on periodic snapshots of their holdings alone, compared to when daily transactions data are also available. To do this, we compare portfolio return estimates based on imputed trades from monthly, quarterly and semiannual snapshots with estimates that also incorporate...

Working paper

A survey of valuation issues for hybrid retirement income scheme products

28 Feb 2016

Andrew Evans

Centre for International Finance and Regulation

So-called variable annuity products which provide certain guaranteed minimum benefits are popular in the United States and Europe but are only in their infancy in Australia. We consider hybrid products with minimum withdrawal rates guaranteed for a fixed term or for life and the financial derivatives embedded in them. A capital markets style model can...

Working paper

The Value of Bank Capital Buffers in Maintaining Financial System Resilience

5 Feb 2016

Christina Bui,

Harald Scheule,

Eliza Wu

Centre for International Finance and Regulation

The Australian Financial System Inquiry (FSI) has identified ways to improve the efficiency and resilience of the Australian banking system. In particular, bank capital levels are expected to be unquestionably strong. However, limited empirical guidance on the size of such buffers exists. We analyse the impact of increased capital buffers on system resilience based on...