Investment risk taking by institutional investors

This paper is the first that formally compares investment risk taking by pension funds and insurance firms. Using a unique and extended dataset that covers the volatile investment period 1995-2009, we find that, in the Netherlands, insurers take substantially less investment risk than pension funds, even though a market risk capital charge for insurers is yet absent. This result can be explained from financial distress costs, which only insurers face. We also find that institutional investors' risk taking is determined by their risk bearing capacity, where this risk bearing capacity depends on capital, size, reinsurance, underwriting risk and human and financial wealth per pension plan participant. Finally, and in line with the ownership structure hypothesis, stock insurers are found to take significantly more investment risk than mutual insurers.Portfolio Choice, Insurance Companies, Pension Funds, Ownership Structure

Subjective Expectations and New Keynesian Phillips Curves in Europe

This paper assesses the empirical performance of the forward-looking new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) in France, Germany and Italy for the period 1991.3-2004.4. Instead of imposing rational expectations, I use direct measures of inflation expectations constructed from Consensus Economics survey data. Dependent on the real marginal costs measure, I obtain significant and plausible estimates for the quarterly discount factor and the price rigidity parameter. When analyzing the role of lagged inflation, I find that only in France lagged inflation does not have explanatory power beyond predicting expected inflation. This suggests that only in France the standard forward-looking NKPC effectively captures quarterly inflation dynamics.Inflation; Phillips Curve; Subjective Expectations

Risk preferences over small stakes: Evidence from deductible choice

This paper provides new field evidence on risk preferences over small stakes. Using unique population and survey data on deductible choice in Dutch universal health insurance, we find that risk preferences are a dominant factor in decision aking. In fact, our results indicate that risk preferences are both statistically and quantitatively more significant in explaining deductible choice behavior than risk type. This finding contrasts with classical expected utility theory, as it implies risk neutrality over small stakes. More recently developed reference-dependent utility models, however, can rationalize risk aversion over small stakes, on account of loss aversion and narrow framing.consumer preferences; insurance; deductible; decision making; loss aversion

Performance of the Dutch non-life insurance industry: competition, efficiency and focus

This paper investigates competition in the Dutch non-life insurance industry indirectly by measuring scale economies and X-inefficiency, assuming that strong competition would force insurance firms to exploit unused scale economies and to push down inefficiencies. We observe substantial economies of scale (on average 11%) that are larger for smaller firms. Despite considerable consolidation in the industry over the last decade, scale economies have increased, as the optimal scale has outgrown the actual one. Comparing estimates across aggregation levels, we find that scale economies are smaller for groups and lines of business than they are for firms. Besides scale, focus and organizational form are important cost determinants as well: generally, specialized insurers have lower costs and face greater economies of scale. Estimates of thick frontier efficiency point to huge cost differences across firms and within lines of business.Overall, our results suggest that there is a lack of competitive pressure in the Dutch non-life insurance industry.Non-life insurance; economies of scale; market structure; concentration; competition; X-efficiency; total cost function; aggregation: insurance groups; firms and lines of business;

Determinants of consumer financial risktaking:Evidence from deductible choice

This paper examines the predictive power of weather for electricity prices in day ahead markets in real time. We find that next-day weather forecasts improve the forecast accuracy of Scandinavian day-ahead electricity prices substantially in terms of point forecasts, suggesting that weather forecasts can price the weather premium. This improvement strengthens the confidence in the forecasting model, which results in high center-mass predictive densities. In density forecast, such a predictive density may not accommodate forecasting uncertainty well. Our density forecast analysis confirms this intuition by showing that incorporating weather forecasts in density forecasting does not deliver better density forecast performances.Financial Risk; Risk Tolerance; Adverse Selection; Deductible; Insurance

Investment risk taking by institutional investors

This paper is the first that formally compares investment risk taking by pension funds and insurance firms. Using a unique and extended dataset that covers the volatile investment period 1995-2009, we find that, in the Netherlands, insurers take substantially less investment risk than pension funds, even though a market risk capital charge for insurers is yet absent. This result can be explained from financial distress costs, which only insurers face. We also find that institutional investors' risk taking is determined by their risk bearing capacity, where this risk bearing capacity depends on capital, size, reinsurance, underwriting risk and human and financial wealth per pension plan participant. Finally, and in line with the ownership structure hypothesis, stock insurers are found to take significantly more investment risk than mutual insurers.Portfolio Choice; Insurance Companies; Pension Funds; Ownership Structure

Performance of the Dutch non-life insurance industry: competition, efficiency and focus

This paper investigates competition in the Dutch non-life insurance industry indirectly by measuring scale economies and X-inefficiency, assuming that strong competition would force insurance firms to exploit unused scale economies and to push down inefficiencies. We observe substantial economies of scale (on average 11%) that are larger for smaller firms. Despite considerable consolidation in the industry over the last decade, scale economies have increased, as the optimal scale has outgrown the actual one. Comparing estimates across aggregation levels, we find that scale economies are smaller for groups and lines of business than they are for firms. Besides scale, focus and organizational form are important cost determinants as well: generally, specialized insurers have lower costs and face greater economies of scale. Estimates of thick frontier efficiency point to huge cost differences across firms and within lines of business. Overall, our results suggest that there is a lack of competitive pressure in the Dutch non-life insurance industry.Non-life insurance, economies of scale, market structure, concentration, competition, X-efficiency, total cost function, aggregation: insurance groups, firms and lines of business

Taylor Rules for the ECB using Consensus Data

We estimate Taylor rules for the euro area using Consensus expectations for inflation and output growth and we compare these estimates with more conventional specifications in which actual outcomes are used. According to the model with Consensus data, the ECB takes expected inflation and expected output growth into account in setting interest rates, while in the more conventional model specification the coefficient of inflation is not significantly different from zero. Only when using survey data we find that the ECB's policy has been stabilizing. Finally, using a framework suggested by English et al. (2003), we find support for both policy inertia and serially correlated errors in ECB Taylor rules.Taylor rule; ECB; real-time data; policy inertia; serial correlation