Raising Capital in an Insurance Oligopoly Market

We consider an oligopoly market where firms offer insurance coverage against a risk characterised by aggregate uncertainty. Firms behave as if they were risk averse for a standard reason of costly external finance. The model consists in a two-stage game where firms choose their internal capital level at stage one and compete on price at stage two. We characterise the subgame perfect Nash equilibria of this game and focus attention on the strategic impact of insurers capital choice. We discuss the model with regard to the insurance industry specificities and regulation.     

Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of Copper Mining on Peru’s Recent Economic Growth

Peru is the second-largest producer and exporter of copper in the world. This paper proposes a novel approach to assess short-run and long-run effects of copper on Peru’s recent economic growth. Annual data over the 2014–2018 period were used to calculate a Mining Contribution Index (MCI). An institutional quality indicator of the World Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum measured the dependence of Peruvian economic growth on mining and the quality of its institutions, respectively. Then, monthly data during the period 2005–2018 were used to run vector autoregressive (VAR) and vector error correction (VEC) models to measure copper’s effects on the country’s economy over time. VAR-VEC models included copper production, exports, international price, investment, taxes paid by producing companies, and Peru’s gross domestic product (GDP). Stationarity and causality of variables were verified with the Augmented Dickey-Fuller and Granger tests, respectively. Due to the presence of non-stationary variables, a VEC model was implemented to forecast short- and long-run effects. The main results show that real GDP responds to copper output and other related explanatory variables differently, depending upon the instrument applied. Peruvian GDP has increased dependence on copper mining. The quality of its institutions could explain the presence of Dutch Disease or resource curse theory. Short- and long-run effects of copper output on GDP were generally statistically non-significant. GDP was statistically significant in relation to other mining variables, such as copper exports and the international price of copper.

     

Ursachen geschlechtsspezifischer Kostenunterschiede in der Privaten Krankenversicherung: Eine empirische Untersuchung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Anforderungen des AGG

The new “Allgemeine Gleichbehandlungsgesetz” (General Equal Treatment Act) also influences the premium calculation of the German Private Health Insurance to antagonize gender discrimination in premiums. The higher premiums in the Private Health Insurance women pay are caused by higher expectation of life, by the risk of fertility, and by higher individual health-care costs for health services. We study how strong the gender influence in health-care costs of men and women are and if they are influenced by the factors mentioned above. We analyse if there is any gender discrimination in premium calculation in the Private Health Insurance. The results show that after eliminating the factors only a small reduction of premiums is found. We still find a cost difference between women and men. This difference can be explained by the different usage of health services but this depends less on the gender rather on individual psychosocial factors.     

Testing evolutionary theory of household consumption behavior in the case of novelty - a product characteristics approach

This article tests and extends the evolutionary theory of household consumption behavior, which is an alternative to neoclassical theory. Evolutionary economists offer novel approaches to the analysis of consumption behavior that emphasize the major role of learning in the evolution of consumer preferences and wants. As a possible inspiration for further progress in evolutionary thought, this paper examines the idea of consumer learning by studying the nature of what consumers should learn in the context of ‘novelty’. Our empirical results regarding novelty during the learning process show that consumers learn the ‘new characteristics’ of consumer goods, contrary to the Lancasterian approach, which suggests that the characteristics space of goods is fixed. We show that during the process of consumption, ‘consumer learning’ extends the characteristics space of consumer goods; this phenomenon is far from negligible and differs across product types. Moreover, our results show that the emergence of new characteristics cannot be modeled as a Poisson process because these new characteristics exhibit clear interdependence over time.     

Verbesserte Institutionen für den Arbeitsmarkt in der Wirtschaftskrise

Bis in die 90er Jahre war der deutsche Arbeitsmarkt dadurch charakterisiert, dass ein Aufschwung den Bestand der Arbeitslosigkeit kaum beeinfl usste, eine Rezession hingegen schon. Seit fünf Jahren gilt das Umgekehrte: der Aufschwung schl?gt auf die Entwicklung der Arbeitslosigkeit durch, die Rezession hingegen kaum. Offenbar pr?gen l?nger dauernde Anpassungsprozesse über Konjunkturzyklen hinweg die Arbeitsmarktentwicklung.     

Capital Market Development,Competition, Property Rights,and the Value of Insurer Product‐Line Diversification: A Cross‐Country Analysis

In this article, we show that the effect of product diversification on performance is not homogeneous across countries. Diversified insurance companies perform significantly worse than their focused competitors in countries with well‐developed capital markets, high levels of property rights protection, and high levels of competition. In addition, we find that the diversification–performance relationship for insurance companies depends on company size. For large insurers operating in countries with less developed capital markets, diversification significantly increases performance. Our results suggest that the optimal organizational structure may be different for insurers operating in emerging economies than for insurers operating in developed countries.     

Wir wünschen guten Appetit!

Besser essen im Krankenhaus - Essen kann glücklich machen. Essen kann aber auch belastend sein. Gerade im Krankenhaus verschl?gt es vielen Senioren den Appetit. Es liegt in der Verantwortung der Pflegenden, sich dieses Problems anzunehmen. Doch wie gelingt es, auch unter schwierigen Bedingungen, den Bedürfnissen der Patienten gerecht zu werden?     

Incomplete Enforcement of Pollution Regulation: Bargaining Power of Chinese Factories

Only a limited number of papers haveempirically examined the determinants of themonitoring and enforcement activities performedby the environmental regulator. Moreover, mostof these studies have taken place in thecontext of developed countries. In this paper,we empirically examine the determinants of theenforcement of pollution charges in China.More precisely, we seek to identify thecharacteristics which may give firms more orless bargaining power with local environmentalauthorities pertaining to the enforcement(collection) of pollution charges. Firms fromthe private sector appear to have lessbargaining power than state-owned enterprises.Firms facing an adverse financial situationalso appear to have more bargaining power.Finally, we also show that the higher thesocial impact of a firm's emissions (asmeasured by the presence of complaints), thesmaller the bargaining power of the firms withlocal environmental authorities.     

Experten für schwache Herzen

Pflegeexperte/in Herzinsuffizienz - Wenn das Herz nicht mehr in der Lage ist, den Körper ausreichend mit Blut zu versorgen, tut Hilfe dringend Not. Patienten mit chronischer Herzinsuffizienz leiden im Alltag unter teils massiven Einschränkungen und brauchen umfassende Unterstützung. Es besteht Handlungsbedarf, denn eine optimale Versorgung kann Leben verlängern.