Strategisches Asset-Liability Management in der Versicherungswirtschaft — Ein Ansatz zur integrierten Bilanzstrukturoptimierung

Asset-Liability Management has gained increased significance within the German insurance industry. This was mainly driven by recent capital market developments. In fact, insurers have encountered challenges to earn given interest guarantees. Regulatory changes also require more sophisticated ALM-tools. Solvency II will change the underlying paradigm and shift balance sheets perception towards a market value oriented view. Especially liabilities will have to be accounted for using the fair value approach. Most ALM-tools appear to be unable to cope with these demands. To improve this current practice, in this paper a Markowitz-approach is employed in order to generate an integrated method for the optimization of assets and liabilities in the life insurance industry. This technique aims to link new regulatory requirements to the latest capital market theory and therefore delivers a procedure for an integrated asset allocation policy in the insurance industry.     

Energy Prices and Carbon Taxes under Uncertainty about Global Warming

This paper extends the strategic interactions between producers of fossil fuels concerned about their profits and a taxing government concerned about the consumers’ welfare for uncertainty: global warming follows an Itô -process. Stochasticity requires to differentiate between reversible and irreversible emissions in contrast to the deterministic version. The unconstrained (= reversible) case allows for a closed form solution but not the more realistic and constrained case. Nevertheless interesting analytical properties (e.g. about when to stop emissions, implicit conservation due to monopolistic supply) are derived and complemented by a numerical example.     

制造(完美)威尼斯

威尼斯:所有双/三年展的母亲,现在几乎已经被她在圣保罗,悉尼,伊斯坦布尔或光州的子女以及在全世界一百多座城市的孙子辈展览所赶超。但它仍然是所有双年展的鼻祖,拥有特色鲜明的国家馆,内容广泛的外围展(国家馆和同期活动)。为期三天的开幕狂欢每次都让我们感叹如今的艺术界有多么国际化。威尼斯双年展比其他任何展览更能反映国际艺术界的现状和气氛——这     

Hysteresis in economic relationships: An overview

I am grateful for helpful comments to G. Heidbrink, J. Möller, H.J. Ramser, W. Scheremet, and W. Smolny (University of Konstanz).     

MUNICIPAL CONTRACTING OUT: GOVERNANCE CHOICES,MISALIGNMENT AND PERFORMANCE IN SWEDISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT

In this paper we apply a Transaction Cost Theory framework to analyse the use and effects of contracting out in Swedish local government. During the last decade Swedish local authorities, like in many other countries, have, to a larger extent, started to contract external subcontractors to fulfil their responsibilities towards its citizens. It is not only in the traditional subcontracting sectors such as housing, infrastructure, and technical services that this trend is evident, but also in policy areas like education, social care, and elderly care. In fact, very little is known about the overall effects of, and the mechanisms underlying, governance choices. The overall results corroborate transaction cost reasoning. Supplier competition and specificity have anticipated effects on municipal de‐integration. Too little, but not too much, use of contracting out, in relation to theoretical predictions, worsens performance. The latter aspect is not fully in accordance with TCE‐propositions.     

Herstellung von Wettbewerb durch Übertragung der Alterungsrückstellung in der Privaten Krankenversicherung

The system of individual prospective aging reserve enables the insured persons irrespectively of their individual risk to change their Private Health Insurance. Besides the presentation of an implementation concept it is shown that there is no inducement to miscalculate the extent of the individual prospective aging reserve on purpose.