This volume was prepared by Luise Röpke while she was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes three self-contained chapters about aspects of the integration of new...

Since January 2005, pensions in Slovakia are operated by a three-pillar system as proposed by the World Bank. This paper concentrates on the mandatory, fully funded second pillar. The authors present a dynamic accumulation model for determining the optimal switching strategy among pension funds...

This paper analyzes empirical market utility functions and pricing kernels derived from the DAX and DAX option data for three market regimes. A consistent parametric framework of stochastic volatility is used. All empirical market utility functions show a region of risk proclivity that is...