Optimal level of fraudulent disclosure when litigation is costly

In this article, we show that the effects of a legal system depend on the cost of litigation. For very low levels of legal costs, an equilibrium exists where the manager always fraudulently reports firm quality (i.e., always reports “good news”) and the investors bring suit any time firm earnings are low. For an intermediate range of legal costs, there exists an equilibrium where the frequency of fraudulent reporting is an increasing function of the costs of litigation. In this equilibrium, investors will follow a mixed strategy of bringing suit. With high legal costs, the manager always issues fraudulent disclosures and the investors never bring suit. When legal costs are not high, the threat of lawsuits removes moral hazard and adverse selection problems. The dead-weight loss from lawsuits creates a demand for auditing and may cause the manager to manipulate the amount of retained ownership.     

Optimal compensation contracts when managers can hedge

This paper examines optimal compensation contracts when executives can hedge their personal portfolios. In a simple principal-agent framework, I predict that the Chief Executive Officer's (CEO's) pay-performance sensitivity decreases with the executive-hedging cost. Empirically, I find evidence supporting the model's prediction. Providing further support for the theory, I show that shareholders also impose a high sensitivity of CEO wealth to stock volatility and increase financial leverage to resolve the executive-hedging problem. Moreover, executives with lower hedging costs hold more exercisable in-the-money options, have weaker incentives to cut dividends, and pursue fewer corporate diversification initiatives. Overall, the manager's ability to hedge the firm's risk affects governance mechanisms and managerial actions.     

Optimal insurance contracts without the non-negativity constraint on indemnities: revisited

In the literature on optimal indemnity schedules, indemnities are usually restricted to be non-negative. Keeler [1974] and Gollier [1987] show that this constraint might well bind: insured could get higher expected utility if insurance contracts would allow payments from the insured to the insurer at some losses. This paper extends Collier’s findings by allowing for negative indemnity payments for a broader class of insurers’ cost functions and argues that the indemnity schedule derived here is more appropriate for practical applications (e.g. in health insurance). JEL Classification D80 · D81 · D89     

Optimal tax-timing and asset allocation when tax rebates on capital losses are limited

This article studies the portfolio problem with realization-based capital gain taxation when limited amounts of losses qualify for tax rebate payments, as is the case under current US tax law. When the tax rate applicable to realized losses exceeds that on realized capital gains, it can be optimal to realize capital gains immediately and pay capital gain taxes to regain the option to use potential future losses against a higher tax rate. This incentive adds an entirely new and as yet unstudied dimension to the portfolio problem. It causes risk averse investors to hold more equity and attain higher welfare levels than is the case when trading under a tax system that seeks to collect the same amount of taxes, but does not allow for tax rebate payments. This is because the benefit to these investors from having their losses subsidized is greater than the suffering from having profits taxed at a higher rate.     

Optimal innovation of futures contracts

This article presents a simple model of the innovation of newfutures contracts by transaction volume-maximizing futures exchangesin incomplete markets under uncertainty, with mean-variancepreferences and proportional transactions costs. We characterizethe set of Nash equilibria for a number of exchanges simultaneouslyor sequentially choosing contrasts. The optimal monopolisticcontract design is shown to be Pareto-optimal. An example showsthe failure of Pareto optimality for a particular Nash equilibrium.Likewise, in a monopolistic multiperiod setting, an exampleshows the failure of Pareto optimality given an incentive forthe exchange to induce turnover.     

The benefit of life insurance contracts with capped index participation when stock prices are subject to jump risk

We analyze the benefit to the insured of newly traded, innovative life insurance contracts. On a sequence of yearly reference days, the insured can choose between a guaranteed return (linked to the insurer’s asset result) and a capped index participation. The cap is adjusted at the beginning of each year such that both alternatives have the same value and the option to select is costless (product structuring condition). We point out that this condition cannot always be met. If the guaranteed return exceeds the upper bound of the capped index participation, the insurer can make a side profit. We show that a rather low insurance result also implies a rather low stock exposure, even if the insured opts for the index participation. Concerning the impact of the index dynamics, we emphasize that it is important to distinguish between jump and diffusion risk because the pricing of jump risk has an impact on cap rates that can be offered to an insured. Finally, we show that the optimal decision strategy of a CRRA investor implies an index selection even if it is unfairly priced such that the insurer indeed makes a side profit.     

A performance analysis of participating life insurance contracts

Traditional life insurance products, in particular participating life insurance contracts, are often criticized. Their performance is often said to be poor compared to other investment alternatives. Interestingly, this perception appears to persist although very little research has been conducted into the performance of participating life insurance contracts. But are participating life insurance contracts actually bad for policyholders? We conduct a performance analysis based on contracts offered in the German market, in order to provide evidence to support decision making by policyholders.     

Uniqueness of the fair premium for equity-linked life insurance contracts

An equity-linked life insurance contract combines an endowment life insurance and an investment strategy with a minimum guarantee. The benefit of this contract is determined by the guaranteed amount plus a bonus equal to a call on the portfolio. This bonus is similar to an Asian option. This article analyzes the relationship between the periodic insurance premium and its proportional share invested into the portfolio. For a general model of the financial risks we show the existence and uniqueness of an insurance premium. Furthermore the premium is strictly increasing and convex as a function of the share invested.     

法院审理保险合同案件的两种解释方法比较

目前保险合同诉讼案件日趋增多,为探究当事人订立合同时的真正意图,不少法院采用了语境解释,当事人为证实自己的主张不断地举证,法院慎重地审查当事人提出的证据,但法院仍然存在错判的风险,而当事人诉讼成本的增加则是确定的。有时法院采用文本解释,即仅根据保险合同本身也能正确地判案,但诉讼成本大大降低。本文比较了这两种解释方法对法院判决保险合同案件准确性以及当事人花费诉讼成本的影响,指出文本解释优于语境解释。     

Optimal job design in the presence of implicit contracts

We characterize the optimal job design in a multitasking environment when the firms use implicit contracts (i.e., bonus payments). Two natural forms of job design are compared: (i) individual assignment, where each agent is assigned to a particular job and (ii) team assignment, where a group of agents share responsibility for a job and are jointly accountable for its outcome. Team assignment mitigates the multitasking problem but may weaken the implicit contracts. The optimal job design follows a cutoff rule where only the firms with high reputation concerns opt for team assignment. However, the cutoff rule need not hold if the firm can combine implicit incentives with explicit pay‐per‐performance contracts.     

Optimal insurance in the presence of reinsurance

This paper studies an optimal insurance and reinsurance design problem among three agents: policyholder, insurer, and reinsurer. We assume that the preferences of the parties are given by distortion risk measures, which are equivalent to dual utilities. By maximizing the dual utility of the insurer and jointly solving the optimal insurance and reinsurance contracts, it is found that a layering insurance is optimal, with every layer being borne by one of the three agents. We also show that reinsurance encourages more insurance, and is welfare improving for the economy. Furthermore, it is optimal for the insurer to charge the maximum acceptable insurance premium to the policyholder. This paper also considers three other variants of the optimal insurance/reinsurance models. The first two variants impose a limit on the reinsurance premium so as to prevent insurer to reinsure all its risk. An optimal solution is still layering insurance, though the insurer will have to retain higher risk. Finally, we study the effect of competition by permitting the policyholder to insure its risk with an insurer, a reinsurer, or both. The competition from the reinsurer dampens the price at which an insurer could charge to the policyholder, although the optimal indemnities remain the same as the baseline model. The reinsurer will however not trade with the policyholder in this optimal solution.     

How to design down-and-out barrier option contracts so that firms invest when it is socially efficient

This paper investigates how to design down-and-out barrier options contracts so as firms invest when it is socially efficient. A government initially offers a firm a privileged right to exercise an investment opportunity that exhibits external benefits to society, but will eliminate this opportunity if its prospects are sufficiently bleak. The firm will invest at the date further away from that is socially efficient if the firm either is less uncertain about the return of the investment or incurs lower investment costs, or the government owns a more valuable knock-out option. Consequently, under these three scenarios the government can efficiently either offer the firm a higher investment tax credit or impose the firm a higher lease fee for holding the option to invest.     

Optimal risk sharing through renegotiation of simple contracts

We frequently observe that contracts do not include all of the contingencies that would seem to be necessary for optimal risk sharing between the parties to the contract. One reason may be that the possibility of renegotiation makes the contract more contingent than it appears. A simple contracting problem is used to show how even a simple contract may achieve optimal risk sharing if new information arrives slowly relatively to the speed of renegotiation.     

我国保险格式条款行政监管比较分析

保险合同行政监管是各种保险合同监管方式中最早的一种,同时也是必不可少的一种。我国历来重视对保险格式条款的行政监管。《合同法》、2009年修订的《保险法》、《消费者权益保护法》以及不少地方性法规都不同程度地规定了保险合同监管的主体、内容、方式、原则、宗旨等,这些规定一方面整体确立了保险监管的基本框架,同时又划分了监管主体各自的监管疆界。     

构建我国老年护理保险制度研究

在中国已经进入老龄化社会的背景下,本文以探讨人口老龄化带来的最突出的问题———老人护理问题的解决为研究对象,运用数据分析、对比分析等实证方法,对世界各国解决老年护理问题所采取的方法和途径进行研究,提出我国应当借鉴国外经验,建立符合我国国情的老年护理保险制度。制度模式上以强制的社会性长期护理保险作为主要选择,同时鼓励并支持发展商业性护理保险,对于从社会保障机制和制度层面解决老年护理难题提供了新的思路。     

On the design of optimal health insurance contracts under ex post moral hazard

We analyze the design of optimal medical insurance under ex post moral hazard, i.e., when illness severity cannot be observed by insurers and policyholders decide for themselves on their health expenditures. The trade-off between ex ante risk sharing and ex post incentive compatibility is analyzed in an optimal revelation mechanism under hidden information and risk aversion. The optimal contract provides partial insurance at the margin, with a deductible when insurers’ rates are affected by a positive loading, and it may also include an upper limit on coverage. The potential to audit the health state leads to an upper limit on out-of-pocket expenses.     

寿险合同复效之立法变动及规范方向

保险合同的中止和复效是因人寿保险合同的保险费交付债务的特殊性而在保险法上的特别规定。其规定在强行性上属于半强性规范,是为保护危险团体成员的利益而设,保险人不能通过格式条款或其他方式予以排除适用,或作出较该规范更不利于危险团体成员利益的规定。为此,需要在立法上增加关于认知和判断半强性规范的效力性规定,同时,也需明确复效的具体条件,以消除保险人在实际上通过协商同意来操控处于效力停止状态的保险合同的命运,使危险团体成员的利益得以落实。     

The limits of diversification when losses may be large

Recent results in value at risk analysis show that, for extremely heavy-tailed risks with unbounded distribution support, diversification may increase value at risk, and that generally it is difficult to construct an appropriate risk measure for such distributions. We further analyze the limitations of diversification for heavy-tailed risks. We provide additional insight in two ways. First, we show that similar non-diversification results are valid for a large class of risks with bounded support, as long as the risks are concentrated on a sufficiently large interval. The required length of the support depends on the number of risks available and on the degree of heavy-tailedness. Second, we relate the value at risk approach to more general risk frameworks. We argue that in markets for risky assets where the number of assets is limited compared with the (bounded) distribution support of the risks, unbounded heavy-tailed risks may provide a reasonable approximation. We suggest that this type of analysis may have a role in explaining various types of market failures in markets for assets with possibly large negative outcomes.