This paper examines the incidence of firm bankruptcies and start-ups in Switzerland based on unique register data. We propose to assess the frequency of bankruptcies over time using the concept of excess mortality. During the Corona crisis in 2020 and the first half of 2021, bankruptcy rates...

This paper tests whether housing wealth mitigates the effects of health shocks on financial stress and mortality. We link cancer records to mortgage, bankruptcy, foreclosure, and credit report data. We find that cancer diagnoses are financially destabilizing even for households with health...

Campbell, Hilscher, and Szilagyi (2008) show that firms with a high probability of default have significantly low average future returns. We show that there is a large overlap between stocks classified as high default risk, and those that are likely to produce extremely high returns over the...

This paper examines the incidence of firm bankruptcies and start-ups in Switzerland based on unique register data. We propose to assess the frequency of bankruptcies over time using the concept of excess mortality. During the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 and the first half of 2021, bankruptcy rates...

We analyze the demographics of zombie firms and durations of zombie spells as well as their determinants, including an application on public subsidies using firm level population panel data from Finland. Firm-level analysis of firm demographics reveals that zombie-firms, as commonly defined in...

This paper examined a set of over two thousand crypto-coins observed between 2015 and 2020 to estimate their credit risk by computing their probability of death. We employed different definitions of dead coins, ranging from academic literature to professional practice, alternative forecasting...

A deferred annuity typically includes an option-like right for the policyholder. At the end of the deferment period, he may either choose to receive annuity payouts, calculated based on a mortality table agreed to at contract inception, or receive the accumulated capital as a lump sum....

Motivated by a recent demographic study establishing a link between macroeconomic fluctuations and the mortality index kt in the Lee-Carter model, we assess the impact of macroeconomic fluctuations on the solvency of a life insurance company. Liabilities in our stochastic simulation framework...

We study the valuation and hedging of unit-linked life insurance contracts in a setting where mortality intensity is governed by a stochastic process. We focus on model risk arising from different specifications for the mortality intensity. To do so we assume that the mortality intensity is...

This paper investigates the effect of adverse selection on the private annuity market in a model with two periods of retirement. In order to introduce the existence of limited-time pension insurance, we assume that for each period of retirement separate contracts can be purchased. Demand for the...