In Our Lives in Their Portfolios, Brett Christophers provides an account of the rise of ‘asset manager society’ – a world in which the infrastructures of public life are converted from public to private ownership. Here I use Christophers’ analysis to comment on growing calls for asset manager investment in climate adaptation. The asset manager business model requires ever-escalating returns, a poor fit with the now unavoidable losses that climate change promises to bring.

Asset managers have assumed a position of unprecedented power and influence in the control of essential infrastructures of social life, with broadly negative ramifications. But as the commentaries assembled here all insist, it did not – and does not – have to be this way. In this reply, I discuss the potential, as I see it, for the world to be otherwise, offering a rather pessimistic prognosis.

Water is often referred to as our most precious resource, and for a good reason – drinking water and wastewater services sustain core functions of the critical infrastructure, communities, and human life itself. Our water systems are threatened by aging infrastructure, floods, drought, storms, earthquakes, sea level rise, population growth, cyber-security breaches, and pollution, often in combination. Marginalized communities inevitably feel the worst impacts, and our response continues to be hampered by fragmented and antiquated governance and management practices. This paper focuses on the resilience of water sector (drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater [DWS]) to three major hazards (Sea-Level Rise, Earthquake, and Cyberattack). The purpose of this paper is to provide information useful for creating and maintaining resilient water system services. The term resilience describes the ability to adapt to changing conditions and to withstand and recover from disruptions. The resilience of DWS systems is of utmost importance to modern societies that are highly dependent on continued access to these water sector services. This review covers the terminology on water sector resilience and the assessment of a broad landscape of threats mapped with the proposed framework. A more detailed discussion on two areas of resilience is given: Physical Resilience, which is currently a major factor influencing disruptions and failures in DWS systems, and Digital Resilience, which is a rapidly increasing concern for modern infrastructure systems. The resilience of DWS systems should be considered holistically, inclusive of social, digital, and physical systems. The framework integrates various perspectives on water system threats by showcasing interactions between the parts of the DWS systems and their environment. While the challenges of change, shock and stresses are inevitable, embracing a social–ecological–technical system-of-systems and whole-life approach will allow us to better understand and operationalize resilience.

In contemporary Iran, many shops are under the “shop-lease contract with sar-qofli.” In this contract, sar-qoflisar-qofli, a strong usufructuary right supported by intangible assets such as the shop’s reputation, is given to the tenant. The “shop-lease contract with sar-qofli” originated from a traditional merchants’ custom in Iran’s business quarters. After the 1979 Revolution, the Law of Lessor–Lessee Relationships, which provides a legal framework for the practice of “shop-lease contract with sar-qofli,” was completely revised, since Islamic jurists regarded haqq-e kasb o pisheh o tejārat as problematic. Haqq-e kasb o pisheh o tejārat, the legal designation of sar-qofli, was based on a heterogeneous value concept introduced into the Iranian legal system from abroad during World War II. As a result of this revision, another alternative for asset management was granted to shop owners. Nevertheless, “shop-lease contract with sar-qofli” remains the most widely employed form of lease in Iran’s property lease market.

Motivated by a wide range of applications, we consider a development of Whittle's restless bandit model in which project activation requires a state-dependent amount of a key resource, which is assumed to be available at a constant rate. As many projects may be activated at each decision epoch as resource availability allows. We seek a policy for project activation within resource constraints which minimises an aggregate cost rate for the system. Project indices derived from a Lagrangian relaxation of the original problem exist provided the structural requirement of indexability is met. Verification of this property and derivation of the related indices is greatly simplified when the solution of the Lagrangian relaxation has a state monotone structure for each constituent project. We demonstrate that this is indeed the case for a wide range of bidirectional projects in which the project state tends to move in a different direction when it is activated from that in which it moves when passive. This is natural in many application domains in which activation of a project ameliorates its condition, which otherwise tends to deteriorate or deplete. In some cases the state monotonicity required is related to the structure of state transitions, while in others it is also related to the nature of costs. Two numerical studies demonstrate the value of the ideas for the construction of policies for dynamic resource allocation, most especially in contexts which involve a large number of projects.

An asset manager invests the savings of some investors in a portfolio of defaultable bonds. The manager pays the investors coupons at a constant rate and receives a management fee proportional to the value of the portfolio. He/she also has the right to walk out of the contract at any time with the net terminal value of the portfolio after payment of the investors' initial funds, and is not responsible for any deficit. To control the principal losses, investors may buy from the manager a limited protection which terminates the agreement as soon as the value of the portfolio drops below a predetermined threshold. We assume that the value of the portfolio is a jump diffusion process and find an optimal termination rule of the manager with and without protection. We also derive the indifference price of a limited protection. We illustrate the solution method on a numerical example. The motivation comes from the collateralized debt obligations.

The aim of this paper is to stimulate theoretical thought about financial elder abuse within families, by exploring the potential of ‘routine activities theory’ for raising our understanding of, and response to, its occurrences. Research into financial elder abuse, defined as the illegal or improper use of a person's finances or property by another person, has tended to emphasise the abusive event and the associated risk factors. ‘Routine activities theory’, in contrast, directs attention more to developing prevention strategies that focus on everyday activities and hence seek to reduce the opportunities for illegal activity. The authors' research programme on the broad topic of money management and older people in Australia has conceptualised financial elder abuse as one possible outcome of the family management of older people's assets. This paper reports an application of routine activities theory to in-depth data of the asset-management practices and experiences of 81 family members who were assisting 86 older people. The paper concludes that the theory contributes to our understanding of how and why financial abuse occurs in families. It makes clear the distorting influence of a sense of entitlement and the preventive importance of both capable guardians, to oversee family-asset management and be alert to mismanagement, and the need for improved financial awareness, skills and probity in the community in connection with this common task of assisting older people to manage their financial assets.

Managing the assets of older people is a common and potentially complex task of informal care with legal, financial, cultural, political and family dimensions. Older people are increasingly recognised as having significant assets, but the family, the state, service providers and the market have competing interests in their use. Increased policy interest in self-provision and user-charges for services underline the importance of asset management in protecting the current and future health, care and accommodation choices of older people. Although ‘minding the money’ has generally been included as an informal care-giving task, there is limited recognition of either its growing importance and complexity or of care-givers' involvement. The focus of both policy and practice have been primarily on substitute decision-making and abuse. This paper reports an Australian national survey and semi-structured interviews that have explored the prevalence of non-professional involvement in asset management. The findings reveal the nature and extent of involvement, the tasks that informal carers take on, the management processes that they use, and that ‘minding the money’ is a common informal care task and mostly undertaken in the private sphere using some risky practices. Assisting informal care-givers with asset management and protecting older people from financial risks and abuse require various strategic policy and practice responses that extend beyond substitute decision-making legislation. Policies and programmes are required: to increase the awareness of the tasks, tensions and practices surrounding asset management; to improve the financial literacy of older people, their informal care-givers and service providers; to ensure access to information, advice and support services; and to develop better accountability practices.