Der Einfluss einer staatlichen Grundsicherung auf die Versicherungsnachfrage bei asymmetrischer Informationsverteilung

In this article, we develop a model framework in which the influence of a state assistance on insurance demand in an insurance market with imperfect information can be examined. It turned out that a state subsidy of very low level has no influence on the insurance demand at all. If the state assistance is adequately high, the individuals will prefer government assistance to market insurance. In case of adverse selection, a state assistance can have the consequence that the good risks decide not to buy any insurance while the bad risks purchase full insurance cover. The state assistance can therefore contribute to solve the problem of adverse selection. In case of moral hazard, a surprising result has been found out. The state assistance can bring the measures of loss minimizing to a standstill before the insurance can do it. The state subsidy amplifies the moral hazard behaviour and is therefore not a suitable instrument to solve problems with moral hazard.     

The Demand for Life Insurance in OECD Countries

This article examines the determinants of life insurance consumption in OECD countries. Consistent with previous results, we find a significant positive income elasticity of life insurance demand. Demand also increases with the number of dependents and level of education, and decreases with life expectancy and social security expenditure. The country's level of financial development and its insurance market's degree of competition appear to stimulate life insurance sales, whereas high inflation and real interest rates tend to decrease consumption. Overall, life insurance demand is better explained when the product market and socioeconomic factors are jointly considered. In addition, the use of GMM estimates helps reconcile our findings with previous puzzling results based on inconsistent OLS estimates given heteroscedasticity problems in the data.     

Corporate governance or globalization: What determines CEO compensation in China?

This paper examines the relationship between corporate governance and CEO compensation in China. In contrast to results derived from U.S. data, we find little evidence that Chinese CEOs take advantage of weaker board structures or less demanding shareholders to extract higher compensation packages. Instead, our results lend support to the view that the increasingly global managerial labor market and compensation standards have a greater impact on CEO pay level. Our study suggests that CEOs in developing economies like China, in our case, benefit more from their degree of exposure to these changes than from corporate governance imperfections.     

Ex-ante performance of REIT portfolios

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - The Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) market has become an increasingly important vehicle for alternative investment for equity investors. While...     

Roadmapping Corporate Social Responsibility in Finnish Companies

This paper presents a roadmap of Finnish companies adopting and managing corporate social responsibility (CSR). It discusses the companies' views on CSR and highlights the practices that Finnish companies have adopted or are currently adopting. It also presents a framework that outlines the CSR processes and management prospects.Results showed that Finnish companies are progressively managing CSR. This newly revived thinking about social responsibility is viewed as an issue traced back from Finland's history of industrial development. There is no general definition of CSR; however, various concepts are connoted into it. Driven by several factors, CSR is developing gradually as indicated by the positive responses and initiatives of the companies.CSR management and practices towards employees, suppliers, community and customers are well defined locally based generally on established socially responsible behavior which could be articulated by laws and regulations, corporate values and business ethics. However, managing CSR with a global scope, problems such as; lack of information and structured management system, different views and interpretations, supply chain complexities, overlap with environmental issues, etc. often lead some companies to manage CSR haphazardly. Views and management of CSR are also influenced by some distinct Finnish cultural attributes.An initial conceptual framework for CSR is drawn reflecting the current practices and prospects for management strategies. Such framework can be used in organizing and streamlining CSR elements for effective management approaches and measuring of performance. It could be expected that in due time, the efforts of the companies will become more evident, organized and systematically managed.     

An international CAPM for partially integrated markets: Theory and empirical evidence

This article proposes a theoretical testable capital asset pricing model for partially segmented markets. We establish that if some investors do not hold all international assets because of direct and/or indirect barriers, the world market portfolio is not efficient and the traditional international CAPM must be augmented by a new factor reflecting the local risk undiversifiable internationally. We also introduce a suitable framework to test this model empirically. Using a sample of six emerging markets and three mature markets, we find that the degree of stock market integration varies through time and that most of the sample emerging markets have become more integrated in the recent years. The local risk premium for emerging markets represents the most important component of the total risk premium, but its relative importance has decreased recently. Differently, the total risk premium for developed countries is largely driven by global factors.     

Local Governance: Impacts of Fiscal Decentralization on Government Size and Spending Composition in Vietnam*

The study provides an understanding of the impacts of fiscal decentralization and local governance on government size and spending composition. We use a balanced panel data set of 63 provinces of Vietnam over the 2006–2015 period. By estimating the spatial Durbin model, we find that local public spending and government size grow over time and have spatial spillovers. Fiscal decentralization significantly reduces public spending and government size, which supports the Leviathan hypothesis. More interestingly, combining local governance, the marginal spatial spillover effects of the fiscal decentralization on public spending and government size are intensified. Our findings imply that local governments should enhance interregional collaboration in fiscal management to limit duplicate public spending and promote regional sustainable development.     

Investment climate,outward orientation and manufacturing firm productivity: new empirical evidence

Drawing on the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, we revisit the link between firm-level investment climate and productive performance for a panel of enterprises surveyed twice in time in 70 developing countries and 11 manufacturing industries. We take advantage of the time dimension available for an increasing number of countries to tackle the endogeneity issue stressed in previous studies. We also use pertinent econometric techniques to address other biases inherent in the data (e.g.measurement errors, missing observations and multicollinearity). Our results reinforce previous findings by validating, with a larger than usual sample of countries and industries, the importance of a larger set of environment variables. We show that infrastructure quality, information & communication technologies, skills and experience of the labour force, cost of and access to financing, security and political stability, competition and government relation contribute to firms’ and countries’ performances gap. The empirical analysis also illustrates that firms which choose an outward orientation have higher productivity level. Nevertheless, outward oriented enterprises are more sensitive to investment climate limitations. These findings have important policy implications by showing which dimensions of the business environment, in which industry, could help manufacturing firms to be more competitive in the present context of increasing globalization.     

The spillover effect of the US uncertainty on emerging economies: a panel VAR approach

The article quantifies the spillover effects of the United States’ (US) uncertainty shocks on emerging economies, using a panel VAR model. We find that the US uncertainty shocks are the risks, and hence drop the capital inflow, investment, consumption, export and output of emerging economies. This also induces a depreciation of emerging market currencies. As a result, our model predicts a fall in short-term interest rate of emerging economies to react against the US uncertainty shocks. Our findings partly help explain the slow recovery of the world economy after the 2008–2009 global financial crisis.