Long-Term Risk and Portfolio Optimization

Dear Colleagues,

Long-term investors, such as pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, and insurance companies, face complex challenges in optimizing their portfolios over extended horizons. These include managing uncertainty in macroeconomic conditions, climate-related risks, technological disruption, and the evolving structure of financial markets. This Special Issue, “Long-Term Risk and Portfolio Optimization”, invites the submission of high-quality theoretical, empirical, and policy-oriented research that advances our understanding of how to model, measure, and manage long-horizon investment risks. The focus is on long-term financial decision-making, including portfolio construction, risk assessment, asset pricing, and policy design, in the face of uncertainty, structural change, and evolving global challenges.

We invite original research or practitioner papers that explore, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Long-horizon portfolio optimization under regime shifts and model uncertainty;
• Robust optimization and dynamic asset allocation frameworks;
• Incorporating climate risk and ESG factors into strategic asset allocation;
• Lifecycle investing and target-date fund optimization;
• Term structure of risk premia and macro-financial uncertainty;
• Strategies for pension funds and sovereign wealth funds under demographic and longevity risk;
• Machine learning and AI applications in long-term investment modeling;
• Drawdown risk, tail-risk hedging, and downside protection mechanisms;
• Behavioral biases and time-inconsistent preferences in long-term decision making;
• Crypto assets, tokenization, and digital infrastructure in institutional portfolios.

Submissions to this Special Issue should advance theoretical modeling, provide empirical evidence, or offer constructive insights for academics, practitioners, and policymakers.

Prof. Dr. Ruilin Tian
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Risk and Financial Management is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• long-horizon investment
• portfolio optimization
• strategic asset allocation
• risk management
• regime-switching models
• ESG and climate risk
• life-cycle investing
• robust optimization
• term structure of risk premia
• institutional investors