Momentum strategies of German mutual funds

The existence of the momentum effect in stock returns has been documented for the US (e.g., Jegadeesh and Titman in J. Finance 48(1), 65–91, 1993) and many other national equity markets worldwide (e.g., Griffin et al. in J. Finance 58(6), 2515–2547, 2003). However, little is known about the active employment of momentum strategies among institutional investors outside the US. This paper provides first evidence of momentum behavior among German mutual funds. We find the fund trades to follow stock returns on an aggregated institutional level. Moreover, we detect significant momentum behavior among funds with a European and global equity focus, as well as among funds predominantly investing in Asia. In contrast, German funds do not seem to engage in momentum strategies when trading domestic stocks. While only half the funds in our sample trade in accordance with past returns, 66 % of the funds within the largest size quintile follow momentum strategies. Finally, we do not find momentum trading funds to outperform the other funds.     

Cross-country differences in the contribution of future migration to old-age financing

As life expectancy increases and fertility declines, population aging puts pressure on the financing of welfare states in Europe and other developed countries. Given that immigrant workers are younger than the domestic population, a continuous flow of immigrants reduces the old-age dependency ratio and improves financing. Existing general equilibrium estimates of the public finance contribution of migration, performed with different models, are not comparable across countries and sometimes differ even in sign. We use the same overlapping-generations model with a detailed representation of institutions and labor market activity to provide comparable estimates of the impact of immigration on public finance in four European countries. We find that future projected immigration flows are equivalent to 14.3 % points labor income taxes in Austria, 7.3 points in Germany, 6.2 points in the UK and 1.7 points in Poland in 2060. These differences are due to the projected volume of immigration and institutional setups, among other factors. For comparable volumes of immigration, future flows have largest impact in Germany and smallest in the UK.     

Hedging with small uncertainty aversion

We study the pricing and hedging of derivative securities with uncertainty about the volatility of the underlying asset. Rather than taking all models from a prespecified class equally seriously, we penalise less plausible ones based on their “distance” to a reference local volatility model. In the limit for small uncertainty aversion, this leads to explicit formulas for prices and hedging strategies in terms of the security’s cash gamma.     

The dynamics of premium reserves of life annuities under the regime of Solvency II

The article considers the solvency requirements for a whole portfolio of annuities under the regime of Solvency II. More precisely, the following question is investigated: Which demand of interest on the initial capital – the Solvency II premium reserves – is needed in order to fit the balance for Solvency II capital requirements in the next year? It turns out, that even for a model portfolio of simple annuities with say guaranteed interest rate of 1,25% the demand of interest in one year is greater than 3%. So even if a life insurance company fulfill the capital requirements of Solvency II in 2016 the mentioned effect causes eventually problems in future times.     

Mean-variance hedging with oil futures

We analyze mean-variance-optimal dynamic hedging strategies in oil futures for oil producers and consumers. In a model for the oil spot and futures market with Gaussian convenience yield curves and a stochastic market price of risk, we find analytical solutions for the optimal trading strategies. An implementation of our strategies in an out-of-sample test on market data shows that the hedging strategies improve long-term return-risk profiles of both the producer and the consumer.     

Stakeholder-Sensitive Business Ethics Teaching

Well-established, well-intended and well-designed business ethics teaching can still have little effect. This is not surprising, as long as business ethics does not undertake a business-school-wide dialogue about goals and obstacles, not least as an example of stakeholder participation. The article elaborates such views in a systematic fashion and formulates a list of thirteen premises and nine recommendations in thesis format.     

On business ethics and moralism

Business ethics as an academic field is, not least, about moral criticism and self‐criticism, of business and of business education. However, the business ethics discourse appears to shift between a critique of immorality (which deserves criticism) and a crude moralism. The article explores the concept of moralism with reference to the relevant literature and illustrates its various manifestations with reference to empirical studies. This is followed up by theses for further discussion and research.