Variable annuities and the option to seek risk: Why should you diversify?

We analyze the impacts of an additional rider incorporated in recent retirement products. The payoff is linked to the performance of a multi asset investment strategy and includes a minimum interest rate guarantee. In addition, the buyer receives the option to decide on the investments dynamically. Prominent examples are so called variable annuities. Due to the embedded guarantee, these products are interesting for risk averse investors who benefit from diversification. However, the price setting of the provider takes into account the most risky strategy. This implies that the investor mitigates optimally between the diversification and the worst case strategy. We analyze the distortion and utility effects caused by the additional rider in the presence of background risk and borrowing constraints. A simulation analysis sheds light on the question if the additional rider is worth its costs.     

The process audit

Few executives question the idea that by redesigning business processes--work that runs from end to end across an enterprise--they can achieve extraordinary improvements in cost, quality, speed, profitability, and other key areas Yet in spite of their intentions and investments, many executives flounder, unsure about what exactly needs to be changed, by how much, and when. As a result, many organizations make little progress--if any at all--in their attempts to transform business processes. Michael Hammer has spent the past five years working with a group of leading companies to develop the Process and Enterprise Maturity Model (PEMM), a new framework that helps executives comprehend, formulate, and assess process-based transformation efforts. He has identified two distinct groups of characteristics that are needed for business processes to perform exceptionally well over a long period of time. Process enablers, which affect individual processes, determine how well a process is able to function. They are mutually interdependent--if any are missing, the others will be ineffective. However, enablers are not enough to develop high-performance processes; they only provide the potential to deliver high performance. A company must also possess or establish organizational capabilities that allow the business to offer a supportive environment. Together, the enablers and the capabilities provide an effective way for companies to plan and evaluate process-based transformations. PEMM is different from other frameworks, such as Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), because it applies to all industries and all processes. The author describes how several companies--including Michelin, CSAA, Tetra Pak, Shell, Clorox, and Schneider National--have successfully used PEMM in various ways and at different stages to evaluate the progress of their process-based transformation efforts.     

How Large are the Direct Employment Effects of New Businesses? An Empirical Investigation for West Germany

We analyze the development of employment in start-up cohorts, which is the direct gross employment effect of the new businesses. The data is for West Germany and covers the 1984–2002 period. While total employment in the cohorts remains above the initial level in manufacturing, we find a pronounced decline of employment below this level in the service sector. Only a small fraction of the firms create a considerable amount of jobs. The contribution that the start-up cohorts of the 1984–2002 period made to total employment in 2002 is nearly three times as high in services as in manufacturing.      

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.     

Tax/subsidy policies toward vector-borne infectious diseases

Vector-borne diseases especially rife in poor countries pose sectoral tax/subsidy issues. Preventions and therapies mitigate these diseases in a numerical optimization model combining dynamic epidemiology and economics. The medical distinction between prevention and therapy does not distinguish economic properties of preventions and therapies. Some interventions increase and others decrease moving to the steady state, depending: on the utility function, the targeting of interventions and the disease process. Interventions display negative own-price but indeterminate cross-price effects. Juxtaposing the social planner's with decentralized choices quantifies externalities and shows how subsidies implement the first-best. One prevention and the therapy are equally subsidized.