High replacement rates from public old age insurance might lead to the belief that little room is left for private sector annuities in Germany. Taking a closer look, we find a small market with a surprisingly large variety of products. Due to the recent pension reform and future ones to come the...

We estimate remaining life expectancy at age 65 using a very large sample of male German pensioners. Our analysis is entirely nonparametric. Furthermore, the data enable us to compare life expectancy in eastern and western Germany conditional on a measure of socio-economic status. Our findings...

We analyse the effect of abolishing gender-based categorisation of risks on the pricing of annuity contracts. Under the absence of screening activities, we find clear evidence of insurers expecting strong adverse selection effects. In particular, most of the unisex contracts’ payouts closely...