This paper studies the effects of introducing competition for local passenger railway markets in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. We compare the evolution of the frequency of service on lines that were exposed to competition for the market with lines procured by direct negotiations with the incumbent. Our results suggest that the competitively procured lines enjoyed a stronger growth of the frequency of service than those that were not procured competitively, even after controlling for various line characteristics that might have had an independent influence on the frequency of service. Our results further suggest that the effects of competition may depend strongly on the operator.
The paper examines a game-theoretic evolutionary model of an asset market with endogenous equilibrium asset prices. Assets pay dividends that are partially consumed and partially reinvested. The investors use general, adaptive strategies (portfolio rules), distributing their wealth between assets, depending on the exogenous states of the world and the observed history of the game. The main goal is to identify strategies, allowing an investor to "survive," i.e. to possess a positive, bounded away from zero, share of market wealth over the whole infinite time horizon. This work brings together recent studies on evolutionary finance with the classical topic of non-cooperative market games.
Vermögende Kunden weisen eine ausgeprägte Wertschätzung für persönliche Anlageberatung auf. Dies zeigt eine repräsentative Studie des Institutes für schweizerisches Bankenwesen der Universität Zürich. Befragt wurden Schweizer Private Banking Kunden sowie Kundenberater und Exponenten des Managements Schweizer Vermögensverwalter. Allerdings geht aus der Studie auch hervor, dass sich die kommende Erbengeneration (bis 49 Jahre) auch sehr offen gegenüber Online-Lösungen im Private Banking zeigt. Traditionsreichen, aber zukunftsgerichteten Privatbanken könnte demnach eine Anpassung ihrer Beratungskonzepte neue vielversprechende Nischen eröffnen.
What is the nature of imperfections in the market for liquidity? Studying bidder level data from European Central Bank (ECB) repo auctions, we find that this market appears to be informationally efficient in the sense that participants do not have private information about future short-term rates. However, auction allocations affect banks' subsequent behavior in a way that is consistent with a degree of allocational and operational inefficiency. Also, large bidders appear to have better access to the interbank market than small ones. Finally, the evidence suggests that the ECB uses collateral haircuts that do not equilibrate opportunity costs.
This paper concerns the pricing of American options with stochastic stopping time constraints expressed in terms of the states of a Markov process. Following the ideas of Menaldi et al., we transform the constrained into an unconstrained optimal stopping problem. The transformation replaces the original payoff by the value of a generalized barrier option. We also provide a Monte Carlo method to numerically calculate the option value for multidimensional Markov processes. We adapt the Longstaff-Schwartz algorithm to solve the stochastic Cauchy-Dirichlet problem related to the valuation problem of the barrier option along a set of simulated trajectories of the underlying Markov process.
Die zweckmässige Leitung einer Pensionskasse ist von grosser Bedeutung. Anforderungen an die Stiftungsräte dienen dazu, eine wirksame Pension Fund Governance zu gewährleisten; ebenso ist die Einführung von guten Anreizstrukturen empfehlenswert, damit die Organe der Pensionskasse ihre Verantwortung wahrnehmen.
It has been shown in past research that unemployment has a large negative impact on subjective well-being of individuals. In this paper, I explore whether and to what extent people with more social capital are sheltered from the harmful effects of unemployment. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel 1984–2004, I find that social capital is an important predictor of well-being levels, but there is no evidence that it moderates the effect of unemployment on well-being. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed, and suggestions for future research given.
