In this paper we study the role of incomplete ex ante contracts for ex post trade. Previous experimental evidence indicates that a contract provides a reference point for entitlements when the terms are negotiated in a competitive market. We show that this finding no longer holds when the terms are determined in a non-competitive way. Our results imply that the presence of a “fundamental transformation” (i.e., the transition from a competitive market to a bilateral relationship) is important for a contract to become a reference point. To the best of our knowledge this behavioral aspect of the fundamental transformation has not been shown before.
This paper argues that life satisfaction data can be used to value natural disasters. We discuss the strengths of this approach, compare it to traditional methods and apply it to estimate and monetize utility losses caused by floods in 16 European countries between 1973 and 1998. Using combined cross-section and time-series data, we find a negative impact of floods on life satisfaction that is sizeable, robust and significant. The estimates are comparable to price discounts found in housing markets. In an exploratory analysis, we find that risk transfer mechanisms such as mandatory insurance have large mitigating effects.
I use the life satisfaction approach to value air quality, combining individual-level panel and high-resolution SO2 data. To avoid simultaneity problems, I construct a novel instrument exploiting the natural experiment created by the mandated scrubber installation at power plants, with wind directions dividing counties into treatment and control groups. I find a negative effect of pollution on well-being that is larger for instrumental variable than conventional estimates, robust to controls for local unemployment, particulate pollution, reunification effects and rural/urban trends, and larger for environmentalists and predicted risk groups. To calculate total willingness-to-pay, the estimates are supplemented by hedonic housing regressions.
This classroom experiment introduces students to the concept of double marginalization, i.e., the exercise of market power at successive vertical layers in a supply chain. By taking on roles of firms, students determine how the mark-ups are set at each successive production stage. They learn that final retail prices tend to be higher than if the firms were vertically integrated. Students compare the welfare implications of two potential solutions to the double marginalization problem: acquisition and franchise fees. The experiment also can stimulate a discussion of two-part tariffs, transfer pricing, contracting, and the Coase theorem.
Procurement auctions carry substantial risk when the value of the project is highly uncertain and known only to insiders. This paper reports the results from a series of experiments comparing the performance of three auction formats in such complex and risky settings. In the experiment, every bidder knows the private value for the project but only a single insider bidder knows the common-value part. In addition to the standard second-price and English auctions we test the “qualifying auction,” a two-stage format commonly used in the sale of complex and risky assets. The qualifying auction has a fully “revealing” equilibrium that implements the revenue-maximizing outcome but it also has an uninformative “babbling” equilibrium in which bidders place arbitrarily high bids in the first stage. In the experiments, the latter equilibrium has more drawing power, which causes the qualifying auction to perform worse than the English auction and only slightly better than a sealed-bid second-price auction. Compared to the two other formats, the English auction is roughly 40% more efficient, yields 50% more revenues, avoids windfall profits for the insider, while protecting uninformed bidders from losses.
Die Schweizer Lebensversicherer sehen sich in der Folge der
demografischen Entwicklung, des tiefen Zinsniveaus und der Liberalisierung der Versicherungsmärkte mit neuen Herausforderungen konfrontiert. Stark von dieser Entwicklung betroffen, ist das Rentengeschäft. Aufgrund der steigenden Lebenserwartung und der tiefen nominalen Zinssätze sind in den letzten Jahre die Umwandlungssätze für neue Renten laufend gesunken, und bei den laufenden
Renten mussten die Lebensversicherer zu Lasten der aktiven Versicherten regelmässig Nachreservierungen vornehmen, um den erwarteten Verpflichtungen gerecht zu werden. Es stellt sich die Frage, ob dies auch künftig ohne weiteres
möglich sein wird, denn die Gerechtigkeit der Lastenverteilung zwischen den Generationen wird damit zunehmend strapaziert. Erschwärend kommt hinzu, dass
auf dem Lebensversicherungsmarkt in der Folge des gestiegenen Wettbewerbdrucks die Marktnachfrage vermehrt den Preis für die Risikoübernahme bestimmt. Damit
verlieren die auf Sicherheit basierenden Prämienkalkulationsprinzipien zunehmend an Bedeutung, während die sinkenden Margen auf die Rentabilität dieses
Geschäftes drücken. Im vorliegenden Dissertationsprojekt wird die Möglichkeit untersucht, wie durch einen Paradigmawechsel in Richtung Risiko-Intermediation das Langleberisikos einer Lebensversicherung mit Vorteil an den Kapitalmarkt zediert werden kann. Besprochen werden insbesondere die Erfassung, die Bewertung und die Verbriefung des Langlebe- und Zinsrisikos aus dem
Rentengeschäft einer Lebensversicherung.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union it has been necessary for Russia to form a coalition with at least one of the transit countries Belarus and Ukraine in order to be able to ship gas to western Europe. This paper models the gas transit game using a cooperative module to determine the bargaining power of the three countries. The bargaining power is dependent on the coalition that is achieved. In the non-cooperative module, the three countries involved decide whether or not to cooperate, with Russia using side payments to induce cooperation. On the basis of published demand and cost estimates, the predicted Nash equilibrium is the cooperative one resulting in the grand coalition. Predicted gas quantities correspond quite closely to actual 2004 and forecast 2010 and 2030 figures. The completion of the North Transgas pipeline will benefit Russia, to the detriment of the others, particularly Ukraine.
