Zur theorie der stabilität statistischer Reihen

Abstract

Wie ist die auffallende Gesetzmässigkeit der auf Massenbeobachtungen beruhenden statistischen Zahlen zu erklären? Wie sind deren Schwankungen rationell zu deuten? Diese Fragen bilden den eigentlichen Kernpunkt jeder Theorie der Statistik, die mehr sein will, als ein buntes Nebeneinander von technischen Regeln über den Modus procedendi beim Sammeln und Ordnen der Massenbeobachtungen.     

Telemedizin – Angebote,Chancen und Kosteneffektivität

Digitalisation of the health care system proceeds. Therefore it is to be expected that telemedicine applications will also be introduced into health care. Currently, the number of telemedicine applications in Germany is low and it is also scarce in comparison to foreign countries. This is striking because it is usually supposed that telemedicine applications have got a great potential to improve health care and reduce expenditures. Hence, this publication discusses offers, chances and the cost-effectiveness of telemedicine.     

EIOPA – Eine Überschreitung des europäischen Rechtsrahmens und die sich daraus ergebenden praktischen Konsequenzen

The EIOPA (European Insurance and Occupational Pension Authority) is a regulatory EU-body, which was founded on the 1st of January, 2011. The EIOPA was established as a result of the financial crisis that took place in 2007/2008, and it is part of a newly created EU-financial system. This essay deals with questions around the legality of the EIOPA, and looks into its legal basis and the scope of its authorities, which are limited by the case law of the European Court of Justice, as well as European and constitutional principles. When considering these aspects, the regulation, on which the EIOPA is based, seems to be partly incorrect. This essay therefore deals with the legal consequences of such faultiness.     

Aufsichtsrats- bzw. Diversitätsmerkmale und Profitabilität von deutschen und österreichischen Versicherungsunternehmen

This paper focuses on supervisory boards and investigates various board characteristics for the largest German and Austrian insurance companies. Furthermore, the study examines the link between diversity policies and financial performance.The study reveals some differences between the two aforementioned countries, which are mainly driven by size effects. In addition, the analysis shows that larger and stock listed insurance companies have better diversity management policies and a higher proportion of female directors. There is no significant correlation between gender diversity measures and profitability.     

Online-Aktivität als moderierender Effekt der Wirkung Convenience instrumentalisierender Attribute auf Kundengewinnung im Versicherungsneugeschäft

Digitization’s increasing influence on the Germans’ everyday lives leads to changes in their buying behavior. In the internet age, customer orientation means, inter alia, to actually understand the changes in the consumers’ expectations. This raises the question how the shift of customer activity from the analogue to the digital world changes the effect of certain exogenous, convenience exploiting attributes on a supplier’s predefined response variables (e.?g. customer acquisition). This article focuses on the insurance industry and, theoretically, deals with the question, whether doing business online can be considered as moderating effect of the relationship between convenience attributes (controllable by insurers) and customer acquisition as target figure in insurance business. Based on the example of contracting a new motor insurance policy it can be derived hypothetically that “digital customers” have different expectations in terms of speed of processing (as convenience attribute) than those signing a policy together with their agent.     

Schöpft die PKV den Rahm ab? Eine spieltheoretische Analyse der Effekte der PKV auf die Medikamentenqualität

Quality of medical treatment is a major goal of Germany’s statutory health insurance system. According to our game theoretic approach, existing price-discrimination between statutory and private health insurance leads to higher quality of innovative drugs. Hence, a move into the direction of a national health service system (so-called citizen insurance) should result in a reduction of innovative drugs’ quality. Moreover and in the case of citizens insurance’s implementation, innovative drugs’ price level should increase for patients with statutory health insurance. Furthermore, a similar effect is caused by the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG) which leads to reduced prospects for pricediscriminations between the statutory and private health insurance system. In summary, the existence of private health insurance in Germany does not cause unfavourable cream-skimming. Rather the split-up of the German health care sector (statutory vs. private health insurance) results in eligible higher drug quality at lower prices for patients with statutory health insurance.     

Wandel der Beratungsqualität auf dem Versicherungsvermittlungsmarkt: Eine ökonomische Analyse der Veränderungen aufgrund der Anforderungen der EU-Vermittlerrichtlinie

The EU-Directive on insurance mediation has introduced an important and sustainable change to the insurance brokerage market with special regard to the quality of the consulting services. The restructuring is necessary due to the increased administration costs of the business accreditation in conjunction with the increased workload. Dependent on the remuneration system—a commission system vs. a fee vs. a mixed commission—, different scenarios for the market organization are possible. This has consequences for the distribution policy. In this situation, the most obvious model seems to be the one, where the insurance brokers specialize and provide only selected type of consulting services. Furthermore, the analysis shows possible influences of further regulation of the insurance brokerage market, which could result in an increase of brokerage costs. This paper continues the actual political discussions regarding the form and basis of remuneration.     

Determinanten der Liquidität in der deutschen Schaden- und Unfallversicherungsindustrie: Bedeutung,Erklärungskraft und Auswirkung der Finanzkrise

The aim of this paper is to analyze the corporate liquidity and its determinants for the German property-liability insurance industry using company-level data for the period 2002–2014. We first investigate the differences in cash holdings across insurers. We then quantify the relative importance of firm-level determinants compared with macroeconomic determinants in explaining insurers’ cash holding choices. In addition, we examine whether the financial crisis of 2008 has an impact on the liquidity situation of insurers. Our results indicate that cash holdings vary significantly across German property-liability insurers. The firm-level determinants size, group affiliation and reinsurance utilization explain more than 50% of the variation. We also find that macroeconomic conditions appear to have negligible effects on the liquidity situation of insurers. In addition, we do not find evidence that the liquidity of German property-liability insurers is influenced by the financial crisis of 2008. The proportion of cash remains relatively stable at 6% of the total assets.     

Controlling der fakultativen Rückversicherung — in einem international tätigen professionellen Rückversicherungsunternehmen

During the last years the need for a high sophisticated ControllingConcept in respect of the international facultative reinsurance business has grown substantially. Facultative business is becoming more and more a strategic business unit or at least a profit centre on it’s own, which has to provide it’s contribution to the companies Return on equities. This (new) way of running international facultative reinsurance business requires a strong and powerful support from the controlling side. Controllers today are acting more as in-house Consultants servicing their clients, the management. The strategic portfolio view becomes more important and is beginning to dominate the (classic) operative controlling attitude, which can easily be taken of by modern and sophisticated IT-solutions.     

Why Don’t Oil Shocks Cause Inflation? Evidence from Disaggregate Inflation Data

This paper uses disaggregate U.S. inflation data to evaluate explanations for the breakdown of the relationship between oil price shocks and consumer price inflation. A data set with measures of inflation, energy intensity, labor intensity, and sensitivity to monetary policy is constructed for 97 sectors that make up core CPI inflation. A comparison of the 1973–85 and 1986–2006 time periods reveals that substitution away from energy use in production and monetary policy were both important, with approximately two‐thirds of the change in response of inflation to oil shocks being due to reduced energy usage, and one‐third to monetary policy. We find no evidence that other factors, such as changes in wage rigidities or changes in the persistence of oil shocks, played a role.     

Litteraturanmälningar

Abstract

In 1977 Thorin introduced the class of generalized Γ-convolutions and proved that the Pareto distribution belongs to this class. In subsequent papers Thorin, Bondesson and others have shown that several important distributions are generalized Γ-convolutions.

The purpose of the present paper is to provide a very short proof of Thorin's result that the Pareto distribution is a generalized Γ-convolution. The proof is based on an old stability property of the Stieltjes cone due to Reuter (1956) and Itô (1974).     

Litteraturanmälningar

Abstract

Dödlighetsintensiteten för enbart tuberkulos är som bekant en kurva, vilken huvudsakligen kan anses bestå av två skilda delar (se exempelvis diagrammet i denna tidskrift för år 1923, sid. 242). Dels består den av en tydligt toppig kurva med maximum vid omkring 23 år (den egentliga tuberkulospuckeln), dels av en långsamt avtagande kurva, som stracker sig ända in i den högsta ålderdomen och vilken jag skulle vilja beteckna som ålderdomsdödligheten i tuberkulos. De långdragna sjukdomsfallen med stationäreller inkapslad process råka stundom under senare åldrar ut för svaghetstillstånd, som hos dem reaktiverar, resp. aggraverar tuberkulosen, under det att en annan persons organism kanske under samma förutsättningar skulle regagera på en annan svag punkt. Den långsamt fallande komponenten av tuberkulosdödlighetensammanhänger med andra ord med de tuberkulösas dödlighetefter längre sjukdomsduration (ehuru naturligtvis även i högre åldrar fall av färsk tuberkulos a priori kunna tänkas existera). Schematiskt kan man alltså (i första approximationen) tänka sig saken så, att insjuknandeintensiteten i tuberkulos är en mycket toppig kurva av samma utseende som tuberkulosdödlighetens första komponent, samt att de smittades dödlighet är mycket hög i början av sjukdomstiden, men avtager hastigt. över denna de tuberkulöst smittades dödlighet av tuberkulos lagrar sig sedan den vanliga dödligheten av andra orsaker, vilken emellertid under de tidiga åldersåren vid jämförelse med dödligheten av tuberkulos är nästan negligeabel.