Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the driving forces of both the decision to participate in individual pension plans and the amount of money allocated to such plans. Moreover, this paper evaluates the potential role that income plays, which has not previously been considered in depth in the financial literature. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a sample of the Spanish population over the period 2008–2015, this paper estimates probit and tobit models, using 165,791 observations. The driving forces of private retirement savings comprise demographic, financial and socio-economic characteristics. Findings: This paper confirms the impact of socio-demographic and economic variables on participation and monetary contributions to pension plans. It also confirms that income plays a non-negligible role. Moreover, empirical evidence reveals that the effect of gender is related to the income stratum to which the individual belongs. Originality/value: Retirement planning plays a key role in retirees’ future income and several countries have emphasised the importance of private individual savings to supplement the minimum provided by public pension schemes. The previous literature has concluded that those who plan their retirement end their working lives with three times the wealth of non-planners. Consequently, analysis of whether people are saving enough for their retirement can contribute to avoiding future wealth inequalities among retirees. Spain is one of the countries with the greatest inequality in income distribution, so this issue is of even greater interest.

This paper analyses the impact of sustainability through ESG factors on the default risk. The sample consists of 990 non-financial firms in the Eurozone over the period 2004–2020. The results show that ESG factors influence default risk, although this relationship could be influenced by the economic cycle. Also, the results highlight a significant interaction effect between firm size and ESG which affects default risk. Considering firm size by terciles, the evidence obtained shows that smaller and medium-sized firms have a positive net effect of a high ESG score on their default risk, while the opposite effect was found among larger firms.

This paper analyzes value creation through currency hedging in the Spanish market. The results show that the hedging with derivatives generated an average premium of 1.53% and that foreign currency debt generated 7.52%, with respect to company value approximated by Tobin's Q, while operational hedging does not affect company value. Moreover, in half of the observations corresponding to companies that hedged with derivatives, the value premium was between 0.08% and 0.99%. In the case of foreign currency debt, the range was between 1.79% and 10.37%. It demonstrates that the contribution of currency hedging to company value fluctuates considerable according to the volume of financial hedging. Thus, an empirical study of this aspect which only analyses the decision to hedge through dummy variables to define financial hedging, as empirical previous studies, can lead to biased results in terms of estimated premium amounts, because it assumes a homogenous treatment of companies regardless of hedging volumes.