保险保障基金最优规模的积累规律及影响因素——基于动态视角和SYS-GMM方法的研究

保险保障基金是解决保险业风险的有力工具,但由于道德风险的存在,该基金并非越多越好,而是存在一个最优规模。本文首先通过最优控制方法构建关于保险保障基金最优规模积累规律的动态模型,通过恰当地控制各期基金的使用量,可以使其规模达到最优规模的要求。基于此,运用中国寿险公司和财险公司近10年来的面板数据,通过系统广义矩方法研究保险保障基金规模的影响因素。研究发现:财险业相对于寿险业更倾向通过保险保障基金方式进行风险管理;当保险公司采取目标集聚战略和差异化战略时,倾向提高保险保障基金的提取规模,而采取总成本领先战略则会降低提取规模;保险公司的竞争战略不同的组合方式会对保障基金的提取规模产生复杂的影响。     

Property–casualty insurance guaranty funds and insurer vulnerability to misfortune

The enactment of property–casualty insurance guaranty fund statutes in the US was associated with a decrease in insurers' reserves for Homeowners and Commercial Multi-Peril insurance. The evidence is: loss ratios among states enacting guaranty fund statutes declined relative to other states. Tests on loss accruals confirm that the effect was due to decrease in reserves. Other tests that distinguish between guaranty fund statutes offer no evidence that guaranty funds encouraged sound insurers to monitor competitors and assist regulators in identifying weak insurers. Instead, the data are consistent with an explanation where insurance regulators identify and discourage risk-increasing activity.     

Under What Conditions Is an Insurance Guaranty Fund Beneficial for Policyholders?

In this article, we derive conditions in an imperfect market setting, under which the introduction of a self‐supporting insurance guaranty fund improves the position of the policyholders. When a guaranty fund is advantageous given homogeneous firms in the market, all policyholders benefit from it to the same extent, if they have the same underlying risk preferences and are charged identical premiums. In a more realistic heterogeneous setting, the introduction of an insurance guaranty fund is in general no longer beneficial for all policyholders in the same manner. Hence, systematic wealth transfers take place between the policyholders of different insurance companies. As a possible solution, and in order to counteract this effect, we introduce a framework for utility‐based fund charges.     

The Impact of Introducing Insurance Guaranty Schemes on Pricing and Capital Structure

The introduction of an insurance guaranty scheme can have significant influence on the pricing and capital structures in a competitive market. The aim of this article is to study this effect on competitive equity–premium combinations while considering a framework with policyholders and equity holders where guaranty fund charges are volume‐based, as levied in existing schemes. Several settings with regard to the origin of the fund contributions are assessed and the immediate effects on the incentives of the policyholders and equity holders are analyzed through a one‐period contingent claim approach. One result is that introducing a guaranty scheme in a market with competitive conditions entails a shift of equity capital towards minimum solvency requirements. Hence, adverse incentives may arise with regard to the overall security level of the industry.     

The Bankruptcy Cost of the Life Insurance Industry Under Regulatory Forbearance

Abstract

In this study the Taiwan Insurance Guaranty Fund (TIGF) is introduced to investigate the ex ante assessment insurance guaranty scheme. We study the bankruptcy cost when a financially troubled life insurer is taken over by TIGF. The pricing formula of the fair premium of TIGF incorporating the regulatory forbearance is derived. The embedded Parisian option due to regulatory forbearance on fair premiums is investigated. The numerical results show that leverage ratio, asset volatility, grace period, and intervention criterion influence the default costs. Asset volatility has a significant effect on the default option, while leverage ratio is shown to aggravate the negative influence from the volatility of risky asset. Furthermore, the numerical analysis concludes that the premium for the insurance guaranty fund is risk sensitive and that a risk-based premium scheme could be implemented, hence, to ease the moral hazard.     

Insurance Guaranty Schemes in a Contingent Claims Setting

The introduction of an insurance guaranty scheme can have significant influence on the pricing and capital structures in a competitive market. This contribution summarizes the major findings of a working paper written by Schmeiser and Wagner (Working Papers on Risk Management and Insurance (IVW-HSG), No. 80, 2010). The effect on competitive equity-premium combinations is studied while considering a framework with policyholders and equity holders where guaranty fund charges are volume-based, as levied in existing schemes. Several settings with regard to the origin of the fund contributions are assessed and the immediate effects on the incentives of the policyholders and equity holders are analyzed through a one-period contingent claim approach. One result is that introducing a guaranty scheme in a market with competitive conditions entails a shift of equity capital towards minimum solvency requirements. Hence adverse incentives may arise with regard to the overall security level of the industry.     

Homeowners Insurance With Bundled Catastrophe Coverage

We estimate the demand for homeowners insurance in Florida and New York with indicated loss costs as our proxy for the quantity of real insurance services demanded. We decompose the demand into the demand for coverage of catastrophe perils and the demand for noncatastrophe coverage and estimate these demand functions separately. Our results are relatively consistent in New York and Florida, including evidence that catastrophe demand is more price elastic than noncatastrophe demand. We also find evidence that consumers value options that expand coverage, buy more insurance when it is subsidized through regulatory price constraints, and consider state guaranty fund provisions when purchasing insurance.     

Risk-Based Premiums for Insurance Guaranty Funds

Insurance guaranty funds have been adopted in all states to compensate policyholders for losses resulting from insurance company insolvencies. The guaranty funds charge flat premium rates, usually a percentage of premiums. Flat premiums can induce insurers to adopt high-risk strategies, a problem that can be avoided through the use of risk-based premiums. This article develops risk-based premium formulas for three cases: a) an ongoing insurer with stochastic assets and liabilities, b) an ongoing insurer also subject to jumps in liabilities (catastrophes), and c) a policy cohort, where claims eventually run off to zero. Premium estimates are provided and compared with actual guaranty fund assessment rates.     

Insurance guaranty fund—what good is it?

In this paper, we analyze under which conditions a self-supporting insurance guaranty fund can be beneficial for the policyholders in an incomplete market. Within the analyzed setting, we find out that in general, if existent, the potential advantages from its introduction cannot be fairly divided among the participating insurers. Thereby, we have to expect systematic wealth transfers between the policyholders of different insurance companies. We introduce a framework for utility-based fund charges as a solution to this problem.     

The Organizational Structure of Insurance Companies: The Role of Heterogeneous Risks and Guaranty Funds

We examine a market with observably heterogeneous risks and a government sponsored guaranty fund and consider whether it is optimal to form a single insurer or separate insurers for each consumer type. Given the economic environment, pooling never dominates the formation of separate insurance companies. This result provides an incentive for the phenomenon of insurance fleets.     

Participation Costs and the Sensitivity of Fund Flows to Past Performance

We present a simple rational model to highlight the effect of investors' participation costs on the response of mutual fund flows to past fund performance. By incorporating participation costs into a model in which investors learn about managers' ability from past returns, we show that mutual funds with lower participation costs have a higher flow sensitivity to medium performance and a lower flow sensitivity to high performance than their higher‐cost peers. Using various fund characteristics as proxies for the reduction in participation costs, we provide empirical evidence supporting the model's implications for the asymmetric flow‐performance relationship.     

On the Economics of Postassessments in Insurance Guaranty Funds: A Stakeholders’ Perspective

This article proposes a model that suggests there are contagion effects among members of an insurance guaranty fund when postassessments are charged to all other insurers upon the failure of a member company. Indeed, these extraordinary payments are shown to increase the default rate of other firms in the industry, ultimately lowering the value of corporate claims as well as government tax claims. The model is also used to examine the efficiency of different recoupment mechanisms (both existing and new) used by regulators and insurers to potentially reduce these contagion effects. Analysis allows us to stipulate the conditions under which a “tax carryforward” provision could be more efficient than the usual recoupment mechanisms known as “premium rate surcharge” and “premium tax credit.”     

Adverse Selection and Competing Deposit Insurance Systems in Pre-Depression Texas

In 1910, Texas instituted a unique deposit insurance program for its state chartered banks by providing a choice between two separate plans: the depositors guaranty fund, similar to insurance schemes in several other states, and the depositors bond security system, which required the procurement of a privately issued guarantee of indemnity. While, under most deposit insurance schemes, the incentive to monitor the financial condition of individual banks simply devolves from depositors to regulators, the bond security system established in Texas distinguished itself by attempting to reintroduce market discipline through the indemnity requirement. Using a probit model with heteroscedasticity, we find evidence that the choice of insurance coverage led to risk-sorting among the banks, with relatively conservative and financially secure institutions opting for the comparatively rigorous bond security system. In addition, the bank failure record indicates the risk differentials between banks in the two plans persisted over time and even possibly grew, suggesting the bond security system at least partially avoided the moral hazard incentives associated with the fixed-rate depositors guaranty plan. These findings support the general view that market discipline is effective in banking.     

ECONOMIES OF SCALE IN MUTUAL FUND ADMINISTRATION

Since many mutual fund expenses are fixed costs, asset growth should reduce the ratio of fund expenses to average net assets. A translog cost function is estimated for a sample of 2,610 funds to evaluate the existence and extent of economies of scale in mutual fund administration. The elasticity of fund expenses with respect to fund assets is significantly less than one, indicating there are economies of scale in mutual fund administration. Average costs diminish over the full range of fund assets; however, the rapid decrease in average costs is exhausted by about $3.5 billion in fund assets.     

Australian equity mutual fund size effects

Berk and Green propose a model of a superannuation fund industry, with a limited population of superior fund managers and a competitive investor market. In this market, superior fund managers capture the value they generate, leaving investors with a normal return on their investment. Furthermore, it is argued that previous period returns, age of the fund and management costs explain variation in net cash flow paid into a fund over time. The Berk and Green predictions find some support in empirical tests, reported in the present paper, based on Australian Morningstar retail and wholesale equity fund data over the period 1995–2005.     

Rating mutual funds: Construction and information content of an investor-cost based rating of Danish mutual funds

We develop a new rating of mutual funds: the atpRating. The atpRating assigns crowns to each individual mutual fund based upon the costs an investor pays when investing in the fund in relation to what it would cost to invest in the fund's peers. Within each investment category, the rating assigns five crowns to funds with the lowest costs and one crown to funds with the highest costs.We investigate the ability of the atpRating to predict the future performance of a fund. We find that an investor who has invested in the funds with the lowest costs within an investment category would have obtained a risk-adjusted excess return that is approximately 3–4 percentage points higher per annum than if the funds with the highest costs had been invested in.We compare the atpRating with the Morningstar Rating. We show that one reason why the atpRating and the Morningstar Rating contain different information is that the returns Morningstar uses as inputs when rating funds are highly volatile whereas the costs the atpRating uses as inputs when rating funds are highly persistent. In other words, a fund that has low costs one year will most likely also have low costs the following year, whereas the return of a fund in a certain year generally contains only little information about the future return that the fund will generate.Finally, we have information on the investments in different mutual funds made by a small subgroup of investors known to have been exposed to both the atpRating and the Morningstar Rating. We find that investors have clear preferences for funds rated high by both the atpRating and the Morningstar Rating.     

A model of emulation funds

Emulation funds are a potentially cost‐effective way for multimanager funds to improve their investment performance by delaying and netting trade signals from underlying managers. We develop a model to represent the expected sources of differential performance in an emulation fund relative to its underlying multimanager portfolio. The model formalises the expected interaction between potential savings and opportunity costs and allows us to observe complexities in the emulation process that are hidden without a benchmark. Finally, the functional representation of the model allows sensitivity analysis of the emulation fund to key parameters and enables us to determine theoretically optimal lag periods.     

Trends and determinants of Australian managed fund transaction costs

The present paper examines the often-overlooked managed fund fee that is incurred when investors enter and exit managed fund products. The present paper documents that transaction costs for investors, measured by the application-redemption spread, are above stock market brokerage rates although they have declined since 1995. The study analyses the relationship between this transaction fee and several variables. In summary, retail fund transaction costs are positively related to retail funds’ assets under management, whilst this relationship is negative for larger wholesale funds, consistent with economies of scale. Direct entry and exit fees and initial commissions are positively related to transaction costs which raises the possibility that the commissions are used to levy soft-dollar payments. The paper also documents a relationship between transaction costs and fund flows which differs between retail and wholesale funds. Overall, the findings are consistent with the proposition that the various fees are used by managers as interchangeable and the different fee regimes reflect different products and markets.     

Agency costs,governance, and organizational forms: Evidence from the mutual fund industry

Using a comprehensive sample of mutual funds and fund families for the period 1992–2004, this study examines the impact of fund management companies’ organizational forms on the level of agency costs within mutual funds. We find that, all else being equal: (1) funds managed by public fund families charge higher fees than those managed by private fund families; (2) public fund families acquire more funds than private fund families; and (3) funds of public fund families significantly underperform funds of private fund families. Collectively, these findings suggest that agency costs are higher in mutual funds managed by public fund families. Our results are consistent with the idea that the agency conflict between the fund management company and fund shareholders is more acute for public management companies because of their shorter-term focus.     

城镇职工医保基金结余问题与基金费用给付模式协同研究——基于某省W区的实证研究

职工医保统筹基金的结余水平与基金所采取的费用给付模式息息相关,城镇职工医保费用给付运营模式决定着统筹基金的结余水平应当保持在什么样的水平。本文以审计人员特有的视角,利用大数据分析技术及审计成果将职工医保基金结余进一步细分为个人账户结余与统筹基金结余进行研究,通过审计研究成果与政策规定的冲突以及职工医保与城乡医保基金相互之间的比较,分析基金结余研究的关键因素,进而探讨医保统筹基金费用给付模式,并就现阶段我国执行现收现付制加弱积累制混合模式的历史原因及现实因素作进一步的深入分析,最后基于人口老龄化背景下缓解职工医保收支恶化趋势提出相应的对策与建议。