Two-Part Tariff Competition With Switching Costs and Sales Agents

This paper study the effects of two-part tariff pricing in a competitive environment with differentiated products and switching costs. This is the case of long distance telephone service, where there is a fixed monthly fee and a charge per call. This is also the case for some financial institutions like mutual funds or pension funds. In many of these industries there are also switching costs. In this environment, markets have reacted by hiring sales agents to switch consumers from one firm to another. Without considering sales agents, social welfare is the same under a two-part tariff regime as under single pricing, but the distribution of surplus is different. When sales agents are introduced to the model, they are able to reduce switching costs, and welfare might increase; but they generate over-switching with respect to the social optimum.

Concentration and Price Rigidity: Evidence for the Deposit Market in Chile

The effects of monetary policy depend significantly on the capacity of the Central Bank to affect market interest rates by managing liquidity. Therefore, it comes out as an important issue to determine the degree of flexibility of lending and deposit rates to changes in policy rates. In this sense, there is a vast literature that explores sluggishness on bank interest rates. In terms of deposit interest rates a larger rigidity has been associated to higher levels of concentration on the banking industry. Besides, the market discipline hypothesis would imply differences on the response of banks’ deposit rates according to their characteristics. This paper analyzes deposit interest rate sluggishness for the Chilean banking industry and its relation with market concentration and bank characteristics. The results support the fact that higher concentration imply more rigidity and that bank characteristics such as solvency, size and loan risk would also make a difference in the speed of adjustment.

VaR Limits for Pension Funds: An Evaluation

This paper evaluates the effects of imposing Value-at-Risk (VaR) limits and quantitative restrictions on portfolio choices in the context of a risk-based supervision framework for defined contribution pension funds. It shows the conditions under which VaR constraints are equivalent to constraints on volatility. The paper also presents some further considerations that regulators should take into account when adopting a risk-based supervision framework when contributions are mandatory and a significant part of the pension depends on the performance of past investments.Portfolio Choice; VaR

Is There Lending Rate Stickiness in the Chilean Banking Industry?

This paper provides new empirical evidence on macroeconomic policies and results in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), based on recent data for the region and the world at large. Our results show that: (i) both monetary and fiscal policies are counter- (pro-) cyclical when credibility is high (low), (ii) the accuracy of inflation-targeting central banks in meeting their targets rises with central bank independence and declines with country risk, (iii) intermediate exchange-rate regimes became less persistent than hard pegs and floats after the Asian crisis, (iv) exchange rate regimes do matter for inflation and growth – and regime transitions have significant output and inflation consequences (v) international differences in productivity growth do not track well real exchange rate (RER) trends and RER misalignments are not resolved by supply reforms that raise growth, (vi) LAC’s financial integration with international capital markets has increased significantly during the last decade, (vii) adverse foreign shocks explain a major part of LAC’s growth performance during the 1990s, and (viii) the composition of foreign capital flows does matter for growth.

Concentration and Price Rigidity: Evidence for the deposit Market in Chile

The effects of monetary policy depend significantly on the capacity of the Central Bank to affect market interest rates by managing liquidity. Therefore, it comes out as an important issue to determine the degree of flexibility of lending and deposit rates to changes in policy rates. In this sense, there is a vast literature that explores sluggishness on bank interest rates. In terms of deposit interest rates a larger rigidity has been associated to higher levels of concentration on the banking industry. Besides, the market discipline hypothesis would imply differences on the response of banks’ deposit rates according to their characteristics. This paper analyzes deposit interest rate sluggishness for the Chilean banking industry and its relation with market concentration and bank characteristics. The results support the fact that higher concentration imply more rigidity and that bank characteristics such as solvency, size and loan risk would also make a difference in the speed of adjustmentDeposit interest rate, market concentration, monetary policy rate

Turnover and Regulation: The Chilean Pension Fund Industry.

We study price competition in a model with differentiated products and searching costs. In this model firms charge a price above marginal costs. This positive mark-up gives firms incentive to steal consumers from their rivals. For this purpose, firms hire sales agents that contact customers personally to switch them from one firm to another and offer rewards to the switchers. These rewards can be interpreted as a price cut to rival's customers, which is a form of price discrimination in this model. This model is applied to the Chilean pension funds industry. In 1995 there was more than one sales agent per two hundred customers with a turnover between Pension Fund Administrators of more than 50 percent. This high turnover was associated with large costs, and the authorities reacted by imposing restrictions to switching by the end of 1997. The empirical section of the paper attempts to analyze the role of sales agents in this industry and the impact of such restrictions.

Saving and Life Insurance Holdings at Boston University – A Unique Case Study

This paper studies savings and life insurance adequacy using a financial planning software package, ESPlanner. This program computes the highest sustainable living standard for the household based on an elaborated life cycle planning model. ESPlanner was used in financial planning sessions with 386 Boston University employees. The sessions solicited highly detailed and very reliable information about respondents' financial circumstances and financial plans. The findings are striking. The correlation between ESPlanner's saving and insurance prescriptions and the actual decisions being made by BU employees is very weak in the case of saving and essentially zero in the case of life insurance. Many employees are spending far more and saving far less than they should, while others are under-spending and over-saving.