Analyse der Abwicklung von gesetzlichen Krankenkassen per sozialrechtlicher Schließung oder per Insolvenzverfahren

Private as well as statutory health insurers have various ways of insolvency. Although the Insolvency Act has been applied for statutory health insurance since 2010, these new options were not used up to now. Anyway, the legislators laid the preference out of closure. This article investigates how the priority of closure could be in contradiction to the applicability of the Insolvency Act. It is asked, whether the introduction of the insolvency capability of health insurance funds was rather to assimilate the frame conditions relating to pension promises than creating a real alternative. One reason could be, that the Insolvency Act is not only generally applicable in the liquidation of a health insurance fund, but potentially even the best alternative. The insolvency proceedings for example are advantageous for health insurance funds within the same group because the maximum load is split and lower than it would be by a closure by social law and in addition to that the PSV is obligatory. The results show, that the generally-accepted, not limited standard preference of closure as laid out by the legislators in § 171b (3) S. 2 SGB V, seems inexplicable. The paper draws parallels to private health insurance companies under Solvency II and opens up new perspectives for legislative measures.     

A principal component model for forecasting age- and sex-specific survival probabilities in Western Europe

The assessment of future mortality is of high importance in many areas where the allocation of future resources has to be planned in time, especially in social security and private life insurance. This contribution represents an extension of the classic forecasting approaches of Bell–Monsell and Lee–Carter. Based on a forecast of the first two principal components, age- and sex-specific survival probabilities for 18 Western European countries are predicted simultaneously until the year 2070. In addition to the correlations in the mortality trends between the age groups and the genders, international trends in mortality are captured as well. A major improvement in the classic Lee–Carter models is the adequate quantification of the uncertainty associated with the whole system of variables by stochastic simulation of all remaining principal components with simple time series models. The model’s easy applicability to further analyses is illustrated by forecasting the median life span as well as the resulting Gender Gap for Germany, France, and Italy.     

The psychological effects on tariff choices for car insurance

Insurance customers increasingly choose between conventional flat-rate car insurance tariffs and innovative usage-based car insurance tariffs such as a pay-per-mile tariff. Usage-based car insurance tariffs require traffic telematics. In this paper, we analyze the decision-making behavior of insurance customers concerning tariff choices as well as the psychological effects. In other service areas, it can be observed that customers often prefer a flat-rate tariff even if their billing rate would be lower on a pay-per-use tariff for a given amount of usage. In study?1, we show that the purchase intention of car insurance tariffs is influenced by psychological effects as well as the customer’s personal experience with the insurance provider and that it is higher for a flat-rate car insurance tariff compared to a pay-per-mile tariff. Customers who have had positive experiences with an insurance provider induce a higher purchase intention for car insurance than customers who have had no experience with an insurance provider. In study?2, we show that the probability of choosing a flat-rate car insurance tariff is higher with increasing monthly kilometers.     

CPA credential perceptions: a case study of Hispanic accountants

One of the recommendations of The Pathways Commission report was to increase the number of diverse entrants into the accounting profession. While the Commission’s recommendation is commendable, the lack of diversity in the accounting profession is not a new problem. Hence, the accounting profession has attempted to address the underrepresentation of minority Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) for many years. To this end, organizations such as American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), National Association of Black Accountants (NABA), Association of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting (ALPFA), and the Ph.D. Project have provided different types of support to alleviate the problem. However, the numbers are still disturbingly low. This is particularly true for Hispanic accountants. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine Hispanic accountants’ perception of the CPA credential. While the results indicate that gender, exam affordability, and job incentives are positively associated with the likelihood of being a CPA, the 150-hour requirement was not perceived as a hindrance for certification.     

Financial investor sentiment and the boom/bust in oil prices during 2003–2008

From both theoretical and policy perspectives, it is important to understand if financial speculation contributes to the boom/bust in oil prices during 2003–2008. In this paper, we disentangle the effects of financial speculation from those of economic fundamentals by focusing on exogenous changes of financial speculation in oil markets identified by changes in financial investor sentiment. Furthermore, we focus on a quasi-experiment setting, and investigate both sentiment-driven overvaluation of oil prices and subsequent mispricing correction. Our findings suggest that financial speculation might have contributed to the 2003–2008 boom/bust in oil prices.     

Do political connections affect stock price crash risk? Firm-level evidence from China

Using a sample of Chinese listed firms in the period from 2003 to 2012, this paper empirically investigates how the presence of politically connected directors affects stock price crash risk. We thereby make a distinction between listed state-controlled firms and privately controlled firms due to their different incentives to appoint politicians as directors on the board. Our empirical results show that politically connected directors exacerbate stock price crash risk in listed state-controlled firms, an effect driven by the appointment of local government officials as directors. In contrast, hiring politicians as directors, particularly central-government-affiliated directors, helps listed privately controlled firms to reduce stock price crash risk. Finally, good quality of institutions does not help to alleviate the positive relationship between political connections and stock price crash risk in listed state-controlled firms. However, it does weaken the role of political connections in reducing crash risk in listed privately controlled firms.     

Sources of time varying return comovements during different economic regimes: evidence from the emerging Indian equity market

We study the economic and non-economic sources of stock return comovements of the emerging Indian equity market and the developed equity markets of the US, UK, Germany, France, Canada and Japan. Our findings show that the probability of extreme comovements in the economic contraction regime is relatively higher than in the economic expansion regime. We show that international interest rates, inflation uncertainty and dividend yields are the main drivers of the asymmetric return comovements. Findings reported in the paper imply that the impact of interest rates and inflation on return comovements could be used for anticipating financial contagion and/or spillover effects. This is particularly critical since during extreme market conditions, the tail return comovements can potentially reveal critical information for active portfolio management.     

Explaining co-movements between equity and CDS bid-ask spreads

In this paper I show that the co-movements between bid-ask spreads of equities and credit default swaps vary over time and increase over crisis periods. The co-movements are strongly related to systematic risk factors and to the theoretical debt-to-equity hedge ratio. I document that hedging and asymmetric information, besides higher funding costs and market volatility risk, are driving factors of the commonality and are significantly priced in CDS bid-ask spreads.