Die aktuellen EU-Solvabilitätsvorschriften sind seit ihrer Einführung in den Jahren1973 (Nichtlebensversicherungen) und 1979 (Lebensversicherungsunternehmen)Gegenstand massiver Kritik.1 Ein zentraler Kritikpunkt resultiert aus derTatsache, dass sich die EU-Solvabilitätsregeln lediglich am...

Starting from the Merton framework for firm defaults, we provide theanalytics and robustness of the relationship between defaultprobabilities and default correlations. We show that loans with higherdefault probabilities will not only have higher variances but also highercorrelations with other...

This paper analyzes the relation between agency conflicts and risk management in a contingent claims model of the firm. In contrast to previous contributions, our analysis incorporates not only stockholder-debtholder conflicts but also managerstockholder conflicts. In particular we consider a...

Does risk shifting incentives or risk management incentives dominate when firms rollover large amounts of maturing debt? The empirical evidence supports the risk management hypothesis by identifying a hump-shaped relation between long-term debt maturity and firm risk. Using...

Capital allocation is an instrument for managing an insurance company. This is linked with three important fields of an insurance company: pricing, risk management and performance management. It is a tool for strategic management so as to decide to further invest in or discontinue a business...

Defined-benefit (DB) pension funds, which are often underfunded, rely on the legal obligation of their sponsor to secure pension rights. This paper is the first to solve the optimal portfolio choice problem of pension funds taking into account the risk on the sponsor's guarantee, and we show...

We derive the optimal corporate pension portfolio policy in a consolidated setting in the presence of PBGC insurance. The paper's result formalizes the forces of risk shifting and risk management that shape the form of the corporate pension portfolio. As in Rauh (2009), the risk-shifting and...

The high cost of capital for firms conducting medical research and development (R&D) has been partly attributed to the government risk facing investors in medical innovation. This risk slows down medical innovation because investors must be compensated for it. We propose new and simple financial...

We consider a risk-averse entrepreneur who invests in a project with idiosyncratic risk and takes debt financing for diversification benefits. In contrast to the literature, we assume the entrepreneur is unable to get a loan from a bank directly because of the low creditability of the...

We analyze a continuous-time stochastic control problem that arises in the study of several important issues in financial economics. An agent controls the drift and volatility of a diffusion output process by dynamically selecting one of an arbitrary (but finite) number of projects and the...