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Working Papers

2018Jan
Michael Sherris

Michael Sherris, Yajing Xu and Jonathan Ziveyi.

Multi-country risk management of longevity risk provides new opportunities to hedge mortality and interest rate risks in guaranteed lifetime income streams. This requires consideration of both interest rate and mortality risks in multiple countries. For this purpose, we develop value-based longevity indexes for multiple cohorts in two different countries that take into account the major sources of risks impacting life insurance portfolios, mortality and interest rates. To construct the indexes we propose a cohort-based affine model for multi-country mortality and use an arbitrage-free multi-country Nelson-Siegel model for the dynamics of interest rates. Index based longevity hedging strategies have the advantages of efficiency, liquidity and lower cost but introduce basis risk. Graphical risk metrics are a way to effectively capture the relationship between an insurer’s portfolio and hedging strategies. We illustrate the effectiveness of using a value–based index for longevity risk management between two countries using graphical basis risk metrics. To show the impact of both interest rate and mortality risk we use Australia and UK as domestic and foreign countries, and, to show the impact of mortality only, we use the male populations of the Netherlands and France with common interest rates and basis risk arising only from differences in mortality risks.

2018Jan
Data graphs

Michael Sherris, Yajing Xu and Jonathan Ziveyi

Multi-country risk management of longevity risk provides new opportunities to hedge mortality and interest rate risks in guaranteed lifetime income streams. This requires consideration of both interest rate and mortality risks in multiple countries. For this purpose, we develop value-based longevity indexes for multiple cohorts in two different countries that take into account the major sources of risks impacting life insurance portfolios, mortality and interest rates.

2018Jan
Keane Mike

Michael P Keane and Ramna Thakur

India has a high level of out-of-pocket (OOP) health care spending, and lacks well developed health insurance markets. As a result, official measures of poverty and inequality that treat medical spending symmetrically with consumption goods can be misleading. We argue that OOP medical costs should be treated as necessary expenses for the treatment of illness, not as part of consumption. Adopting this perspective, we construct poverty and inequality measures for India that account for impoverishment induced by OOP medical costs. For 2011/12 we estimate that 4.1% of the population, or 50 million people, are in a state of “hidden poverty” due to medical expenses. Furthermore, while poverty in India fell substantially from 1999/00 to 2011/12, the fraction of the remaining poverty that is due to medical costs has risen substantially. Economic growth appears less “pro-poor” if one accounts for OOP medical costs, especially since 2004/05, and especially in rural areas.

2017Dec
Cepar - Retirement Decisions

Susan Thorp, Hazel Bateman, Isabella Dobrescu, Ben R. Newell, and Andreas Ortmann

Simplified disclosures can make comparisons between complex financial products easier, and increase consumer expertise. We use incentivized experiments to investigate whether and to what extent simpler information on fees and investment returns assists retirement plan members to make competent choices.

 

2017Dec
Woman offering aged care support

Jennifer Alonso-García, Hazel Bateman, Johan Bonekamp, and Ralph Stevens

Implied endorsement is considered, together with inertia, as an explanation for the stickiness of defaults. This paper explores whether implied endorsement can serve as an explanation for the stickiness of defaults in the retirement decumulation phase.

2017Dec
Elderly couple researching pension options

Jennifer Alonso-García, Hazel Bateman, Johan Bonekamp, Arthur van Soest and Ralph Stevens

Using an online experimental survey, we investigate the importance of rational and psychological motives for saving in retirement for soon to be retired individuals.

2017Dec
Researchers examining data online

Robert Holzmann, Jennifer Alonso-García, Heloise Labit-Hardy, and Andrés M. Villegas

This paper explores five key mechanisms of compensation: individualized annuities; individualized contribution rates/account allocations; a two-tier contribution structure with socialized and individual rate structure; and two supplementary approaches under the two-tier approach to deal with the income distribution tails, and the distortions above a ceiling and below a floor.

2017Oct
Colleagues discussing ageing research

Ermanno Pitacco

These Lecture Notes aim at introducing technical and financial aspects of the life annuity products, with a special emphasis on the actuarial valuation of life annuity benefits. 

2017Sep
Aged care support

Elena Capatina, Michael Keane, and Shiko Maruyama

In the US healthcare system, patients of different socio-economic status (SES) often receive disparate treatment for similar conditions. Prior work documents this phenomenon for particular treatments/conditions, but we take a system-wide view and examine socio-economic disparities in spending for all medical conditions at the 3-digit ICD-9 level.