Université de Zürich - Faculté des sciences économiques

Preferenze individuali e regolamentazione dell’assicurazione sanitaria obbligatoria: un’analisi empirica relativa alla Svizzera

Description: 

Si stanno sempre più diffondendo forme di regolamentazione che promuovono alternative di managed care nell’ambito delle assicurazioni sanitarie. In questo lavoro viene riportato un esperimento che mira a determinare l’ammontare della compensazione richiesta dalla popolazione svizzera
(in termini di riduzione del premio) quale indennizzo per l’introduzione di restrizioni di tipo managed care nell’offerta di assistenza sanitaria. L’esperimento evidenzia come restrizioni concernenti la scelta
del medico richiederebbero un indennizzo medio superiore a un terzo del premio, mentre la sostituzione di farmaci di marca con generici richiederebbe un indennizzo piuttosto contenuto. La marcata eterogeneità delle preferenze costituisce un argomento a sfavore di una regolamentazione che punti a imporre contratti assicurativi uniformi nell’ambito del sistema sanitario svizzero di assicurazione sociale.

Reinsurance or Securitization: The Case of Natural Catastrophe Risk

Description: 

We investigate the suitability of securitization as an alternative to reinsurance for the purpose of transferring natural catastrophe risk. We characterize the conditions under which one or the other form of risk transfer dominates using a setting in which reinsurers and traders in financial markets produce costly information about catastrophes. Such information is useful to insurers: along with the information produced by insurers themselves, it reduces insurers’ costly capital requirements. However, traderswho seek to benefit from trading in financial markets may produce ‘too much’ information,thereby making risk transfer through securitization prohibitively costly.

Discriminatory versus uniform Treasury auctions: Evidence from when-issued transactions

Description: 

We use wehn-issued transactions data to assess the Treasury's current experiment with uniform auctions, suggesting a higher information release, which should reduce pre-auction uncertainty and the winner's curse. Under uniform auctions, wehn-issued volatility falls after the auction and again after the outcome announcement. The pattern is the opposite for discriminatory auctions. This is further evidence that uniform auctions increase pre-auction information and lower the short squeeze. A direct comparison of markups in uniform and discriminatory auctions yields mixed results.

The executive turnover risk premium

Description: 

CEO compensation has increased substantially over the past 15 years, but so has forced turnover. Motivated by this observation, we investigate whether part of the development of CEO pay can be explained by a premium which compensates CEOs for increased job risk. We find that for the CEOs of the largest US corporations, a one percentage point increase in turnover risk is, on average, associated with about 4% more in terms of total compensation. This relation is much stronger in the cross section than it is over time, and it does not appear to be driven by endogeneity. Our findings are consistent with a model of effcient contracting, but are harder to reconcile with a model of entrenched CEOs.

Why have exchange-traded catastrophe instruments failed to displace reinsurance?

Description: 

In spite of the fact that they can draw on a larger, more liquid and more diversiedpool of capital than the equity of reinsurance companies, nancial markets have failedto displace reinsurance as the primary risk-sharing vehicle for natural catastropherisk. We show that this failure can be explained by dierences in information gatheringincentives between nancial markets and reinsurance companies. Using a simple modelof an insurance company that seeks to transfer a fraction of its risk exposure eitherthrough nancial markets or through traditional reinsurance, we nd that the supplyof information by informed traders in nancial markets may be excessive relative to itsvalue for the insurance company, causing reinsurance to be preferred. We show thatwhether traditional reinsurance or nancial markets are ultimately selected dependscrucially on the information acquisition cost structure and on the degree of redundancyin the information produced. Limits on the ability of informed traders to protablytake advantage of their information make the use of nancial markets more likely.

Misstrauische Anlager flüchten

Regulated and non-regulated companies, technology adoption in experimental markets for emission permits, and option contracts

Description: 

This paper examines the investment strategies of regulated companies in abatement technologies, market participants' trading behaviors, and the liquidity level in an inter-temporal cap{and{trade market using laboratory experiments. The experimental analysis is performed under varying market structures: the exclusive presence of regulated companies; the inclusion of subjects not liable for compliance with environmental regulations; the availability of plain vanilla options. In line with theoretical models on irreversible abatement investment, the first experiment shows that regulated companies trade permits at a premium. At the same time the existence of a strict enforcement structure effectively prompts investments in new technologies.The second experiment shows that the presence of non-regulated companies adds liquidity to the market and does not increase price volatility. The last experiment enablesus to investigate the impact of the presence of cash-settled options contracts on the trading strategies of regulated companies. Their expected emissions appears to play a significant rolein the choice of their options strategy.

Optimality of prompt corrective action in a continuous - time model with recapitalization possibility

Description: 

Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) is a system of predetermined capital/asset ratios that trigger supervisory actions by a banking regulator. Our paper addresses the optimality of this regulation system by adapting a dynamic model of entrepreneurial fi?nance to banking regulation. In a dynamic moral hazard setting, we fi?rst derive the optimal contract between the banker and the regulator and then implement it by a menu of regulatory tools. Our main ?findings are the following: ?first, the insurance premium is a risk-based premium where the risk is measured by the capital level; second, our model implies a capital regulation system that shares several similarities with the US PCA. According to our proposed system, regulatory supervision should be realized in the spirit of gradual intervention and the book-value of capital is used as information to trigger intervention. Banks with high capital are not subject to any restrictions. Dividend distribution is prohibited in banks with intermediate level of capital. When banks have low capital level, a plan of recapitalization is required and in the worst case, banks are placed in liquidation.

Banking competition, monitoring incentives and financial stability

Description: 

This paper addresses the desirability of competition in banking industry. In a model where banks compete on both deposit and loan markets and where banks can use monitoring technology to control entrepreneurs' behavior, we investigate three questions: what are the effects of competition on banks' monitoring incentives? Does competition hurt banks' stability? What can be devices to correct potential negative effects of competition vis à vis ?financial stability? We ?find that impacts of competition on banks' monitoring incentives can be decomposed into two effects: one on the attractiveness of monitoring and the other on the monitoring efficiency. The fi?rst effect operates through the link between competition and loan margin. The second effectcomes from the fact that marginal effect of monitoring on entrepreneur's effort depends on loan rate. We characterize the sufficient condition under which competition will increase monitoring incentives as well as banks' stability. For the third question, we focus on the role of capital requirement and claim that with capital requirement, we can attain a weak correction but not strong correction.

Risk aversion and planning horizons

Description: 

A number of empirical studies seem to reject the additive separability of preferences that is assumed in most theoretical models of the life cycle. We show that, when additive separability is abandoned and interactions between consumptions at different dates are taken into account, an interesting relation emerges between risk aversion and length of the planning horizon. Specifically, we show that when consumptions at different dates are specific substitutes, risk aversion increases with horizon length. This may explain the surprising empirical finding that individuals seem to increase the share of wealth held in risky assets as they become older. (JEL: D11, D91, G11)

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