Downside Risk Management of a Defined Benefit Plan Considering Longevity Basis Risk

To control downside risk of a defined benefit pension plan arising from unexpected mortality improvements and severe market turbulence, this article proposes an optimization model by imposing two conditional value at risk constraints to control tail risks of pension funding status and total pension costs. With this setup, we further examine two longevity risk hedging strategies subject to basis risk. While the existing literature suggests that the excess-risk hedging strategy is more attractive than the ground-up hedging strategy as the latter is more capital intensive and expensive, our numerical examples show that the excess-risk hedging strategy is much more vulnerable to longevity basis risk, which limits its applications for pension longevity risk management. Hence, our findings provide important insight on the effect of basis risk on longevity hedging strategies.     

The risk-return relations: evidence from the Korean and Taiwan stock markets

This article examines the risk-return relations conditional on up and down market periods in the Korean and Taiwan stock markets. Based on statistical tests adjusted for the effects of heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation of the residuals, beta is found positively (negatively) related to realized returns in up (down) markets. However, the results are sensitive to portfolio aggregation methods. Its role as a risk measure vanishes in down markets for the two-way (beta-size and size-beta) sorted portfolios. Unsystematic risk is significantly and positively priced only in up markets and mainly for beta-sorted portfolios while total risk is correctly priced except in Taiwan during down markets. Moreover, the impact of skewness and kurtosis on realized returns is not only sensitive to portfolio aggregation methods but also different across stock markets. They are found to be more relevant risk characteristics in the Korean than in the Taiwan stock market.     

Exploring manager’s perspective of service quality strategies in Malaysian Banking Industry

In service industry, the subject of service quality remains crucial as business strive to maintain a comparative advantage in the marketplace. In aftermath of globalization, the operating environment for banking industry has become more dynamic and competitive. Banks have evolved to become diversified financial providers instead of traditional banking-only service providers. With bank placing emphasis on a mutually beneficial bank–customer relationship, customer loyalty must be pursued through repeat purchases. Central to achieving this is often the quality of services offered by the bank should satisfy the customer’s needs. This article attempts to identify any service gaps in Malaysian banking industry and to recommend effective strategies to close these service gaps from bank mangers’ and executives perspectives based on GAPs Model of Service Quality (GAPs Model). Using qualitative data collected from interviews with 30 bank managers and executives, this article provides effectives strategies to close each of the gaps in GAPs Model. It is hoped that the empirical evidences and recommendations provided in this article shed some light to management of banks to improve upon their customer service quality in order to benefit from customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and other behavioural outcomes which will lead to greater competitive advantage and profitability to the banks concerned.     

Modeling Period Effects in Multi-Population Mortality Models: Applications to Solvency II

Recently Cairns et al. introduced a general framework for modeling the dynamics of mortality rates of two related populations simultaneously. Their method ensures that the resulting forecasts do not diverge over the long run by modeling the difference in the stochastic factors between the two populations with a mean-reverting autoregressive process. In this article, we investigate how the modeling of the stochastic factors may be improved by using a vector error correction model. This extension is highly intuitive, allowing us to visualize the cross-correlations and the long-term equilibrium relation between the two populations. Another key benefit is that this extension does not require the user to assume which one of the two populations is dominant. This benefit is important because, as we demonstrate, it is not always easy to identify the dominant population, even if one population is much larger than the other. We illustrate our proposed extension with data from a pair of populations and apply it to the calculation of Solvency II risk capital.     

Developing Mortality Improvement Formulas

Abstract

Longevity improvements have contributed to widespread underfunding of pension plans and losses in insured annuity portfolios. Insurers might reasonably expect some upside from the effect of lower mortality on their life business. Although mortality improvement scales, such as the Society of Actuaries Scale AA, are widely employed in pension and annuity valuation, the derivation of these scales appears heuristic, leading to problems in deriving meaningful measures of uncertainty. We explore the evidence on mortality trends for the Canadian life insurance companies, data, using stochastic models. We use the more credible population data to benchmark the insured lives data. Finally, we derive a practical, model-based formula for actuaries to incorporate mortality improvement and the associated uncertainty into their calculations.     

Enhancing Insurer Value Using Reinsurance and Value-at-Risk Criterion

The quest for optimal reinsurance design has remained an interesting problem among insurers, reinsurers, and academicians. An appropriate use of reinsurance could reduce the underwriting risk of an insurer and thereby enhance its value. This paper complements the existing research on optimal reinsurance by proposing another model for the determination of the optimal reinsurance design. The problem is formulated as a constrained optimization problem with the objective of minimizing the value-at-risk of the net risk of the insurer while subjecting to a profitability constraint. The proposed optimal reinsurance model, therefore, has the advantage of exploiting the classical tradeoff between risk and reward. Under the additional assumptions that the reinsurance premium is determined by the expectation premium principle and the ceded loss function is confined to a class of increasing and convex functions, explicit solutions are derived. Depending on the risk measure's level of confidence, the safety loading for the reinsurance premium, and the expected profit guaranteed for the insurer, we establish conditions for the existence of reinsurance. When it is optimal to cede the insurer's risk, the optimal reinsurance design could be in the form of pure stop-loss reinsurance, quota-share reinsurance, or a combination of stop-loss and quota-share reinsurance.     

Revisiting South Korea's Import Demand Behavior: A Cointegration Analysis*

Using cointegration techniques, the present study re‐examines the long‐run relationships of South Korea's aggregate import demand behavior. The present study considers four domestic activity variables; namely, gross domestic product, gross domestic product minus exports, national cash flow and final expenditure components for aggregate import demand in South Korea. The sample period covers quarterly data from 1970 to 2002. The present study provides empirical evidence of a cointegrating relation in the South Korea's import demand in which it is significant to South Korea's trade policy implication, particularly to improve external balances.     

Japanese aggregate import demand function: reassessment from the ‘bounds’ testing approach

This paper aims to ascertain the long-run relationship of Japanese aggregate import demand function over the period 1973–1997. The cointegration test used, bounds test procedure [J. Appl. Econ. 16 (2001) 289] is a recent test that based on the estimation of an unrestricted error-correction model (UECM). In contrary with previous studies [J. Policy Model. 16 (1994) 291; Jpn. World Econ. 13 (2001) 135], the bounds test confirms a long-run equilibrium relationship between quantity of imports, and its determinants namely real income and relative prices term. The estimated long-run income and price elasticities are 0.99 and −0.82, respectively.     

Convergence and Intercountry Inequality within Asia: A Combined Approach Using Decomposition Techniques and Transitional Dynamics Analysis

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of intercountry inequality and convergence in Asia by using a combined approach that is based on decomposition techniques and transitional dynamics analysis. The research is divided into three stages. First, decomposition by regional subgroups is conducted to estimate the contributions of the interregional component and the five spatial groupings to overall inequality to reveal the development of inequality in Asia. Second, the technique of decomposition by income sources is used to evaluate the relative significance of the agricultural, industrial and service sectors to facilitate formulation of industrial policy for economic development. Finally, the present study analyses the evolution of regional inequality and assesses the possibility of convergence.