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Surrender options in endowment life insurance contracts can result in a surrender risk for the insurer. This risk is closely related to investment and liquidity risks. Consequently, the surrender risk is underestimated if it is assessed without consideration of all major risk sources. Using different risk measures, this paper shows that the surrender risk increases if the liquidity constraint is considered. Additionally, in an extreme event, mass surrender and a liquidity crisis can trigger each other. Therefore, the surrender risk could grow even faster. In this case, the solvency capital calculated within the Solvency II regime may not be enough to provide the intended protection. Furthermore, if policyholders surrender their contracts rationally, insurers face an even higher default threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A proactive and sustainable asset management program is vital for utilities to maintain their capital assets at the required level of service, while ensuring that adequate funds are available for intervening when needed on their riskiest assets. One of the most popular methods for building such programs is by prioritizing capital investments based on the asset's risk of failure, which evaluates its likelihood or probability of failure and impact, or consequence of failure. This paper presents the application of a financial planning analysis using system dynamics to provide insights into quantifying more practical risk avoidance. This is exemplified through a 5‐year budgetary planning scenario analysis for a large‐sized US water utility to help the utility best plan for short and long‐term capital operations and show the value of a data‐driven and risk‐based decision‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The insurance model posits that legislators from a specific political party create courts when they foresee a decrease in their political influence. We develop an application to administrative courts. While the traditional insurance version of the model is about present safeguards against future losses from losing political power, the application is about present safeguards against future losses caused by a potentially disloyal bureaucracy. We test the insurance model with the case of Mexico. Mexican states created 32 administrative courts in the period 1974 to 2017. Two characteristics make Mexico an unusual case. First, states created each of these courts in different time periods. Second, states exhibit significant variance in political cycles. Our empirical findings are largely consistent with the application (dealing with disloyal bureaucracy), but not with the more traditional version (preventing losses from changes in power). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Households in developing countries commonly engage in risk sharing to cope with shocks. Despite this, the residual risk they remain exposed to — often due to aggregate events such as droughts and floods — is considerable. To mitigate these risks, governments, NGOs and multilateral organizations have introduced index insurance. To appreciate its welfare implications, however, it is necessary to assess how insurance interacts with pre-existing risk sharing. We ask to what extent the demand for index insurance — as compared to standard indemnity insurance — depends on the level of pre-existing risk sharing. We contribute by developing a simple theoretical framework which shows that, relative to a state of autarky, risk sharing between agents increases demand for index insurance and decreases demand for indemnity insurance. In an artefactual field experiment with Ethiopian farmers who share risk in real life, we test and confirm these predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study an optimal dividend problem for an insurer who simultaneously controls investment weights in a financial market, liability ratio in the insurance business, and dividend payout rate. The insurer seeks an optimal strategy to maximize her expected utility of dividend payments over an infinite horizon. By applying a perturbation approach, we obtain the optimal strategy and the value function in closed form for log and power utility. We conduct an economic analysis to investigate the impact of various model parameters and risk aversion on the insurer's optimal strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries ban insurers from using genetic test results in underwriting. One study [Howard, R. C. W. (2014). Report to CIA research committee: Genetic testing model: If the underwriters had no access to known results. Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA).] stated that such a ban in Canada would expose life insurers to adverse selection, causing premiums to increase by 12%. More than a quarter of this cost was attributable to a single disorder, Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy (ARVC). We model ARVC in a life insurance market, following the methodology of [Haçarız, O., Kleinow, T. & Macdonald, A. S. (2021). Genetics, insurance and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Scandinavian Actuarial Journal 2021, 54–81.], including 'cascade' genetic testing (CGT), so the rôle of family history in underwriting is modelled explicitly. We review (in the Appendix) the published epidemiology of ARVC, in particular the existence of an effective treatment, which we also include in our model. Our results are consistent with those of [Macdonald, A. S. & Yu, F. (2011). The impact of genetic information on the insurance industry: Conclusions from the 'bottom-up' modelling programme. Astin Bulletin41(02), 343–376.] and [Haçarız, O., Kleinow, T. & Macdonald, A. S. (2021). Genetics, insurance and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Scandinavian Actuarial Journal 2021, 54–81.], namely, that in realistic scenarios premium increases would be negligible. We also consider the possibility of life settlement companies 'gaming' insurers by learning of adverse genetic test results, and conclude that to profit from purchasing policies from affected individuals, they would have to predict the future trajectory of the epidemiology of ARVC better than the epidemiologists themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we obtain an optimal reinsurance contract explicitly in the form of excess-of-loss with a limit when the risk measure is Range-Valueat-Risk. Then we study optimal reinsurance with model uncertainty, where the uncertainty set contains a greatest element in the sense of stochastic order. Furthermore, we study the Stackelberg game in reinsurance with model uncertainty. In order to illustrate how our findings can be applied in practice to determine the optimal reinsurance contract, we perform an empirical study using the Wisconsin Local Government Property Insurance Fund dataset. Tweedie distributions are fit to the building and contents loss amounts from the property fund, and used to determine the optimal loading factor, and reinsurance contract corresponding to the loading factor. From the analysis, we discover that some policies have more recoveries from the optimal reinsurance contract than the premium paid, while others have smaller recoveries than the premium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a renewal risk model with general Erlang distributed interarrival times. We treat this as a Markov modulated risk model and assume, for simplicity, that the states are observable. The insurer can pay dividends and has to inject capital in order to keep the surplus positive. We determine the optimal dividend/capital injection strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the estimation of the risk‐insurance nexus. We specifically examined the effect of geopolitical risk on insurance premium in a panel of 18 countries, while controlling for the effect of real income. Second‐generation econometric methods were employed for this purpose, and the results provided strong evidence of a positive impact on insurance premiums by geopolitical risks. We specifically found that the impact of geopolitical risks on nonlife insurance premium is higher than the impact on life insurance premium. Real income was also found to have a significantly positive effect on insurance premiums, and the impact on nonlife insurance premium was similarly larger than the impact on life insurance premium. On the basis of income elasticity, we found that insurance has the semblance of a luxury good, and on the basis of the panel causality tests, we confirmed the feedback hypothesis. We therefore conclude that exposure to geopolitical risks raises insurance premiums either as a result of increased insurance demand to hedge against geopolitical uncertainty or as a result of uncertainty tax factored into insurance premiums in unstable environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine migration during retirement and its association with retirement satisfaction. Utilizing longitudinal data collected from the Health and Retirement Study, this study estimates a fixed-effects logit model to examine how changing U.S. Census divisions during retirement is related to retirement satisfaction. The findings suggest that a change in residential location during retirement is associated with an increase in retirement satisfaction. In planning for retirement, individuals should examine what will provide them with the highest level of satisfaction during their retirement and whether their current location can facilitate an enjoyable retirement. Financial planners and counselors should also consider, as a part of their systemic retirement planning process, increasing the attention that is given to the residential location in which their clients will reside during retirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to identify the level of financial literacy among South African households and statistically ascertain the impact of financial literacy variables on household savings behaviour. Quantitative research was conducted to achieve these objectives, where data was collected from the employees of City of Tshwane and Mahikeng Municipality. A cluster analysis was employed to identify the group cluster of respondents. In addition, a Path Coefficient analysis was conducted to identify the significance of financial literacy on household savings behaviour. The study's findings revealed that the respondents have a reasonable level of financial literacy, which is in line with the conceptual findings of previous literatures. Secondly, it was ascertained that variables under financial control, financial planning, financial knowledge, and understanding positively impact household savings behaviour. Meaning that the more they are familiar with these variables, the more they are likely to save. On the contrary, the variables under the construct of knowledge of financial products and services were identified to impact household savings behaviour negatively, meaning that the more they are knowledgeable on financial products and services, the lesser they are likely to save. Hence, it was concluded that stakeholders and policymakers in charge of financial and savings literacy in South Africa should incorporate these identified positive variables of financial literacy into their savings campaign programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When individuals, families, and employers select health plans in the United States, they are typically only shown the financial structure of the plans and their provider networks. This variation in financial structure can lead patients to have health plans aligned with their financial needs, but not with their underlying nonfinancial preferences. Compounding the challenge is the fact that managed care organizations have historically used a combination of population-level budget impact models, cost-effectiveness analyses, medical necessity criteria, and current medical consensus to make coverage decisions. This approach to creating and presenting health plan options does not consider heterogeneity in patient and family preferences and values, as it treats populations as uniform. Similarly, it does not consider that there are some situations in which patients are price-insensitive. We seek to highlight the challenges posed by presenting health plans to patients in strictly financial terms, and to call for more consideration of nonfinancial patient preferences in the health plan design and selection process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to explore the implementation of the Local Management Information System (SIMDA) in the improvement of the quality of financial reports of the Buol Regencial Government. It examines the planning, organizing, mobilizing, and supervising the implementation of SIMDA in financial management as an effort to improve the quality of the Local Government Financial Report. Employing a descriptive-qualitative approach, the research conducted in-depth interviews with expert informants, observed the process of preparing financial reports, and analyzed relevant references, policies, regulations, and other supporting documents. The data were analyzed by the following steps: data reduction, data presentation, conclusion formulation. The data were validated by extended observation, data triangulation, and focus group discussion. The results of the study indicate that: a) planning aspects have been implemented properly, especially on indicators for regional financial management planning which have been prepared annually; b) in the implementation aspect, the implementation of SIMDA is still not optimal; this highlights that the improvement of compliance of SIMDA management officers in each Regional Apparatus Organization (OPD) is crucial; c) in the aspect of mobilization, it was found that efforts to implement SIMDA in regional financial management still need to be improved even though several points were implemented optimally; hence, support from the leaders is very influential; d) in the aspect of supervision, supervision efforts in the implementation of SIMDA in each OPD have been optimal in improving the quality of local government financial report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 directed the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Risk Management Association to investigate a policy targeted to farms and ranches that sell through local food markets. However, there is no available research that quantitatively documents the extent to which local food producers utilize Federal crop insurance. Design/methodology/approach: The authors utilize 2013–2016 USDA Agricultural Resource Management Survey data to compare farms and ranches with sales through local food markets to those with and without Federal crop insurance expenditure, as well as the distribution of Federal crop expenditure, across market channels and scales. Findings: There is a little variation in Federal crop insurance expenditure across market channels, defined as direct-to-consumer only sales, intermediated sales, and a combination of direct-to-consumer and intermediated sales. Rather, the results show that scale is the primary predictor of Federal crop insurance expenditure; larger operations are more likely to have nonzero Federal crop insurance expenses. Originality/value: This article provides the first national research to document descriptive statistics of the utilization of Federal crop insurance by US farms and ranches that utilize local food market channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Hailstorms are a major risk in agriculture. In order to mitigate the negative consequences on farm revenues, in the present paper the authors analyse the choice between insurance contracts and anti-hail nets. Furthermore, the authors discuss the consequences of anti-hail nets adoption on the actuarial soundness of the insurance market. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper the authors firstly develop a theoretical model based on expected utility theory to compare the profitability of no-hedging against insurance and anti-hail nets. Subsequently, they test their theoretical model predictions with data of South Tyrolean apple producers. Findings: The authors find that the benefit of anti-hail nets compared to insurance is an increasing function of the overall risk of hail damages, of the farmers' level of risk aversion and of the worth of the agricultural output. Practical implications: Given the authors' findings that anti-hail nets are more profitable for riskier, risk-averse and high-profitable farmers, the diffusion of anti-hail nets could be beneficial for the actuarial soundness of insurance markets. Originality/value: The model developed in the paper is specifically designed to compare the profitability of different agricultural hedging options and can be easily extended to cover other hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of economic statecraft is at a high-water mark. The United States uses sanctions, tariffs, and import and export controls more than ever before. These tools have problems, though. They impose financial costs on domestic interests. They can induce retaliation by target states. And overuse of these tools could drive the United States from its central position in the global financial and economic system, undermining the effectiveness of U.S. economic statecraft in the long run. But there is an underappreciated tool that could perform valuable foreign policy work: tax law. We argue that tax law holds promise to advance U.S. foreign policy interests and that it is especially important to deploy tax tools now. Tax law has distinctive features that make it both a partial substitute and a partial complement to other tools of economic coercion, which means that it can extend the influence of U.S. economic power while reducing the risk of overusing other economic tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By utilizing the Risk Rating 2.0 platform, premiums will more accurately reflect the actual flood damage risk a property has. In 2017, private flood insurers grew by more than half to reach 15% of the total flood insurance policies sold.12 In reviewing one of Neptune's policies, it is not difficult to understand why. For example, a privately owned flood insurance company called Neptune Flood offers a flood insurance policy that provides significantly more coverage than FEMA's program does. Phase one of Risk Rating 2.0 for newly written flood insurance policies started on October 1, 2021, and will continue through March 31, 2022.17 In this phase, insurers may choose which pricing method is more beneficial to them: the legacy rating system or Risk Rating 2.0. [Extracted from the article]

The article outlines several individual and business planning issues to consider before year-end. Topics discussed include monitoring ongoing legislation, tax provisions and credits and its the potential impacts on year-end planning, modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) thresholds and tax payments of state and local taxes.

This article focuses on answering the question of whether or not there is a correlation between Financial Education funneling specifically to an individual's Personal Finance and Quality of Life at Work (QWL), from data collection through questionnaires via Google form targeting the servers of a public HEI of basic, technical and technological education. The questionnaire was divided into two approaches, section 1 that focuses more on socioeconomic issues and section 2 addressing personal finance issues and Quality of Life at Work using the Likert Scale method. With the results found it is possible to realize that despite the high level of qualification and income of respondents, there is no culture of saving and financial planning. A considerable part of the respondents spend more than their income, thus increasing the possibility of using third party resources or default. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this contribution, several opportunities and challenges for long axial field of view (LAFOV) PET are described. It is an anthology in which the main issues have been highlighted. A consolidated overview of the camera system implementation, business and financial plan, opportunities and challenges is provided. What the nuclear medicine and molecular imaging community can expect from these new PET/CT scanners is the delivery of more comprehensive information to the clinicians for advancing diagnosis, therapy evaluation and clinical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the financial literacy level of Indian professional women and its relation to their retirement planning behavior. We use factor analysis and the Rasch model to evaluate the validity and reliability of a financial literacy scale. Additionally, we use multiple regression to examine the association between demographic characteristics and financial literacy with retirement planning. Our results reveal that the respondents display low levels of financial literacy as reflected by a lack of awareness about both basic and advanced financial concepts. Further, a woman's age, income, profession (financial), and understanding of advanced financial concepts are key factors associated with retirement planning behavior. The findings have implications for financial planning professionals, advisors, regulators, and policymakers in guiding women to make better retirement decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both portfolio insurers and constant weight traders investment strategies survive for low expected log returns of risky assets and dominate on different paths for high expected log returns [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a unified competition and cooperation framework for n insurers and investigate the resulting reinsurance game problem. Each insurer's surplus is assumed to be a diffusion process. Each insurer can purchase the proportional reinsurance to reduce his claim risk, and the reinsurance premium is determined via the variance value principle. The objective of each insurer is to find a reinsurance strategy so as to maximize the expected utility of his terminal payoff. We establish a Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman (HJB) equation and the corresponding verification theorem. Furthermore, we derive the explicit solutions for both the equilibrium reinsurance strategy and the value function by solving the HJB equation. Finally, numerical experiments are carried out to illustrate the influences of model parameters such as the size of a group, the number of groups on the equilibrium reinsurance strategy. The numerical results reveal some similarities and differences between the competition case and the cooperation case, and the detailed effects of different competition and cooperation patterns, which provide useful insights for reinsurance in reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A discrete-time risk process is considered where the full distribution of the claim size X is not completely known to the insurance company. Rather, it assumes that the distribution of X given Z = ζ is F ζ where Z is some structural random variable for which a prior is available. The main emphasis of the paper is the unconditional ruin probability ψ (u) in this setting where the premium is either updated according to incoming information about the claim distribution or computed by the expected value principle. This is in turn studied via the conditional ruin probability ψ ζ (u) , for which large deviations estimates are available. Rigorous proofs are given only for the case of the F ζ forming a scale parameter family, including the classical case of gamma claims with a gamma prior. However, the analysis readily suggests what should be the behaviour of ψ (u) in different models for the claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effect of price hedging on publicly subsidized insurance. Theoretically, the effect of hedging is found to have an ambiguous effect on the incentive to purchase revenue insurance. A simulation is used to analyze the relationship between hedging and the Canadian AgriStability program in three regions in Saskatchewan. AgriStability is a margin insurance product, though in the simulation I hold input use constant, allowing the program to operate as if it were revenue insurance. Hedging is found to substantially reduce enrolment in AgriStability in each region. Furthermore, in some simulations the benefits that producers receive from AgriStability are smaller than the value of government subsidies. The results offer an explanation for low participation in AgriStability and show that the risk‐reducing effect of AgriStability is moderated by the ability of crop producers to hedge price risk through other means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study an optimal reinsurance-investment problem with partial information and common shock dependence under the mean-variance criterion for an insurer. The insurer has two dependent classes of insurance business, which are subject to a common shock. We consider the optimal reinsurance-investment problem under complete information and partial information, respectively. We formulate the complete information problem within a game theoretic framework and seek the equilibrium reinsurance-investment strategy and equilibrium value function by solving an extended Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman system of equations. For the partial information problem, we first transform it to a completely observable model by virtue of the filtering theory, then derive the equilibrium strategy and equilibrium value function by using the methods similar to those for the complete information problem. In addition, we illustrate the equilibrium reinsurance-investment strategies by numerical examples and discuss the impacts of model parameters on the equilibrium reinsurance-investment strategies for both the complete information and partial information cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contractors are often simultaneously subject to capital shortages and resource scarcities in construction projects, forcing them to rely on loans to offset cash deficits during project execution. However, few studies have proposed exact or heuristic methods to deal with the financed-based and resource-constrained project scheduling problem (FBRCPSP). This study aims at developing flexible heuristics for the FBRCPSP. To address the FBRCPSP, a mathematical model is first constructed to maximize a project's profit considering financing costs, then modified serial schedule scheme (MSSGS) and modified parallel schedule scheme (MPSGS) heuristics are designed to gain a feasible project schedule and its financial plan while complying with feasibilities of the precedence relationship, resource constraints, and credit limits concurrently. Moreover, the proposed heuristics, implemented as part of a genetic algorithm (heuristics-based GA) can be applied to solve the optimization model of the FBRCPSP. In two case studies, the results showed that the heuristics-based GA adequately explored the feasible solution space so that it could obtain the best solutions near those from the integer programming (IP) technique (By optimization software CPLEX version 12.8) and outperformed the previous precedence-preserving GA in terms of solution quality and computational time. Finally, the developed heuristics can devise or update schedules and the corresponding cash flow and resource-demand profiles, helping practitioners achieve expected profits and implement project control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farm policies have unintended consequences and subsidized crop insurance is no different. We draw on the theory of long-run competitive equilibrium to estimate the effect of subsidized crop insurance on farm output and number of farms in the U.S. Results show that the subsidy led to fewer and larger farms. To the extent that larger farms benefit disproportionately from other farm subsidies, known to increase farm size, subsidized crop insurance can only contribute to further farm consolidation, with consequences for sustainability and depopulation of rural communities. These unintended effects could make the case for reverting to ad-hoc disaster payment programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we apply non-convex regularization methods in order to obtain stable estimation of loss development factors in insurance claims reserving. Among the non-convex regularization methods, we focus on the use of the log-adjusted absolute deviation (LAAD) penalty and provide discussion on optimization of LAAD penalized regression model, which we prove to converge with a coordinate descent algorithm under mild conditions. This has the advantage of obtaining a consistent estimator for the regression coefficients while allowing for the variable selection, which is linked to the stable estimation of loss development factors. We calibrate our proposed model using a multi-line insurance dataset from a property and casualty insurer where we observed reported aggregate loss along accident years and development periods. When compared to other regression models, our LAAD penalized regression model provides very promising results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents a study about the main internationalization strategies used by small and mediumsized companies (SMEs) in Brazil and abroad. In a descriptive and exploratory format, we sought to analyze articles based on Scopus, Capes and Spell in the period from 2015 to 2019 whose focus was a case study with data obtained through primary source. There were few case studies published with this methodological approach, with a trend towards the use of network theory and direct export as internationalization strategies for SMEs. There is some harmony in the distribution of the strategies used by both Brazilian and foreign companies. The technology branch with the largest number of case studies on the subject stands out. Finally, several barriers were identified in the case studies analyzed, with emphasis on the lack of qualification and knowledge, linguistic factor and culture of the host country in addition to financial planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite well-formulated goals for environmental protection in the forestry sector, the biodiversity crisis remains. Protected habitats are often small, isolated and lack continuity. We studied forest planning at a landscape scale as a method to increase habitat connectivity, and improve conservation values whilst maintaining high levels of forest production. We assessed the financial impacts of landscape planning for the landowners, and present a fee-fund system to solve unequal burdens among them. As case studies, we used three landscapes along a latitudinal gradient in Sweden. The results demonstrate some variation between the landscapes in terms of the total cost for set asides and large differences in terms of the financial impact per landowner. Our conclusion is that forest landscape planning may be a way forward to improve conservation efforts, but given the variation in financial impacts, we propose to combine landscape planning with economic tools for compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of detailed medical encounter records for a random sample of one million Missouri Medicare beneficiaries reveals dramatically lower usage of medical services by individuals enrolled in Medicare Advantage Organization health maintenance programs (HMO plans) than by individuals enrolled in traditional Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) plans. Differences in usage and mix of services in five major venues (hospital inpatient, hospital outpatient, general carrier services, home health, and skilled nursing facilities) persist when we control statistically for medical condition and demographic characteristics of insured individuals, availability of medical services in the counties where they reside, and reimbursement arrangements for beneficiaries' primary-care providers. Continuing growth in enrollment for Medicare Advantage plans is therefore expected to have a substantial impact on the resources required for delivery of healthcare services and upon the venues in which medical services for the elderly will be provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2010 Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid eligibility to states' residents with incomes below the federal poverty line, creating both opportunities and challenges to hospitals in states that adopted the new Medicaid eligibility. This article explores the effect of Medicaid expansions on nonprofit hospitals. Using data from Internal Revenue Service and a difference-in-differences design, this article examines the impact of the expansions on the number of, contributions to, and profitability of nonprofit hospitals. The results suggest that Medicaid expansions did not affect the number and profitability of nonprofit hospitals; however, the expansions were associated with a reduction in contributions to certain types of hospitals by around 23%. Therefore, the effects of policy changes vary by the type of nonprofit hospitals, which then need to find better strategies to cope with these changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to bring out the development of a flexible model for nonstationary crop yield distributions and its applications to decision-making in crop insurance. Design/methodology/approach: The authors design a nonparametric Bayesian approach based on Gaussian process regressions to model crop yields over time. Further flexibility is obtained via Bayesian model averaging that results in mixed Gaussian processes. Findings: Simulation results on crop insurance premium rates show that the proposed method compares favorably with conventional estimators, especially when the underlying distributions are nonstationary. Originality/value: Unlike conventional two-stage estimation, the proposed method models nonstationary crop yields in a single stage. The authors further adopt a decision theoretic framework in its empirical application and demonstrate that insurance companies can use the proposed method to effectively identify profitable policies under symmetric or asymmetric loss functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Agricultural insurance has become increasingly important to farmers' livelihood and production in rural China. Yet despite the enormous governmental subsidizing efforts, the insurance participation rate remains below expectations. This study revisits the linkage between farmers' risk attitudes and crop insurance utilization by providing a cross-cutting perspective such that the role of risk aversion is re-scrutinized in Chinese "kindred" village economies. Design/methodology/approach: The authors administrated a lottery-based multiple price list (MPL) experiment by recruiting rice farmers from 12 villages in Sichuan province in southwestern China. Using the experimental data, farmers' risk attitudes are assessed and coefficients of risk aversion are estimated within the rank-dependent expected utility (RDEU) framework by maximizing a structured likelihood function. Findings: This study provides substantiating evidence that rice farmers in southwestern China exhibit relatively high risk aversion. The authors also provide suggestive evidence of the positive relationship between farmers' risk aversion and crop insurance utilization. In addition, findings reveal that kinship network has a negative effect on crop insurance utilization, such that farmers who are connected in higher degree of kinship network have lower likelihood of crop insurance utilization, which suggests that kinship network may be substitute for formal crop insurance. Result also demonstrates that the incentive effect of risk aversion on farmers' crop insurance participation manifests differently depending on the degree of kinship network in rural China. Originality/value: This study provides a cross-cutting perspective by scrutinizing the effects of farmers' risk attitudes and kinship network on crop insurance participation in rural China, which has received relatively little attention in the literature. Conclusions on the effects of risk aversion on crop insurance participation have been mixed in previous studies. In addition, to the best of our knowledge, little has been done to explicitly examine the influence of social proximity and networks on farmers' insurance uptake. This study attempts to fill both gaps. This study provides new insights which might shed lights on the understanding of farmers' crop insurance participation in rural China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective - Sustainable insurance is the new concept that emerges in the current state, that every country adopting now. The objective of the study is to identify the insurance industry's role and contribution to promoting environmental sustainability. To outline sustainable insurance and sustainable/green products and services. Methodology - This paper explores the contribution of the insurance industry and its role in promoting environmental sustainability and social development. This is a theoretical paper, focused on the secondary sources of data from research publications, websites, books, journals, and articles. To achieve the objectives, this study will critically review previous literature and assess contemporary views from different perspectives. Findings-Various insurers are frequently focusing on their progress, enhancing their share of the market, and maintaining better risks to achieve marketplace success. Insurers should always be on the lookout for new ways to set themselves apart from the competition. The implication for insurers is that their actions matter a lot when it comes to environmental issues and providing green insurance solutions can open new business opportunities for the industry. The answer may lie in marketing new products related to potential climate change and the corresponding sustainability/green insurance. Novelty - Sustainable insurance is aimed primarily at developing innovative or green products and services, reducing risk, improving company efficiency, and supporting environmental, social, and financial sustainability. There hasn't been a general overview of the role of insurers in enhancing environmental sustainability and social development done yet. Theoretically, our work aids policymakers and other stakeholders in better understanding the role of insurers in enhancing environmental sustainability and social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to investigate the financial planning characteristics of companies in the Brazilian electric sector that is listed on the website of the National Electric Energy Agency - ANEEL. About the methodological procedures, the research is classified as descriptive and with a quantitative approach. The universe was composed of 75 companies listed on ANEEL in 2018, of which 17 responded to the survey. The data was collected through a the questionnaire, which was subjected to a pre-test with one of the companies that comprised the research universe. Most respondents were male, over 40 years old, graduated in Accounting and who held the position of manager. As a result, it was observed that financial planning is carried out by companies, with the financial sector being the most cited in carrying out the plan, most of which are drawn up annually. In addition, in most companies, financial planning has as its starting point the strategic planning or is aligned with it. When checking, through the Mann-Whitney test if there was a difference between the realization of financial planning and the use of the financing sources used by companies, it became evident that this relationship does not exist. However, there was a statistically significant difference between the realization of financial planning and the importance attached to Net Present Value (NPV) in investment decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there an association between a household financial decision maker's risk tolerance and the performance of the stock market? Some researchers argue that financial market events have little association with the financial risk tolerance (FRT) of household financial decision makers, while others argue that FRT among individuals can vary in relation to significant market fluctuations. The applicability of either argument may depend on the length of the period before and after a major market event. The purpose of this study was to evaluate aggregate changes in FRT around a major stock market event for different anchor time periods and to test the recency bias hypothesis. The analyses were designed to explore the FRT of Americans during a volatile multimonth period of stock market performance in 2018–2019. Several univariate, bivariate, and multivariate tests were used to compare FRT assessment scores pre- and post-October 3rd, 2018 (i.e., the market high in 2018). A decrease in FRT from the market high was noted across the sample; however, the decrease was exhibited most acutely by younger, nonmarried respondents with few investable assets. A noteworthy finding from this study is that financial counselors and financial planners likely serve a "buffering" role when household financial decision makers experience stock market shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to determine the status of existing research on financial planning for retirement. We used bibliometric analysis and content analysis to examine a sample of 1,116 studies conducted over a span of more than five decades. Bibliographic coupling network was developed to determine the intellectual themes in the field. Our findings suggest that the structural, economic, and cultural disparities worldwide lead to distinct pressures for savings on individuals. Further studies should be conducted considering emerging economies and the aforementioned disparities to gain deeper insights. While a few studies have examined the influence of social biases, behavioral biases, personality traits, and psychological constructs on financial literacy and the impact of this interaction on financial planning for retirement. We conclude by suggesting potential future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a nationwide online survey capturing detailed information on the backgrounds and practices of 654 financial planners, this study examines the associations between the use of technologies by financial planners and self-reported time spent within various stages of the six-step financial planning process. Surprisingly, in many cases, use of technology is associated with an increase rather than a decrease in time spent within various stages of the financial planning process. These results suggest that although technologies may provide efficiencies in completing certain tasks, these efficiencies do not necessarily result in net reductions in time spent within the financial planning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial self‐efficacy, or the perceived ability to succeed in managing one's personal financial affairs, is fundamental to effective consumer financial decision making. However, little is known about how to improve consumers' financial self‐efficacy and which consumers are more or less responsive to potential policy interventions. We address these questions through an experimental study among US consumers. We find that asking consumers to recall and analyze successful (unsuccessful) experiences regarding the management of their personal finances is associated with higher (lower) financial self‐efficacy. We provide insight into the underlying process of this effect through moderation and mediation analyses. In particular, we show that the effect of a recall and analyze intervention utilizing a successful previous experience is more pronounced for consumers with a more optimistic personality. Finally, consumers who develop greater financial self‐efficacy as a result of our intervention display more self‐control, leading to a higher financial planning propensity and actual planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the average effect of the affordable care act (ACA) Medicaid expansion on cigarette consumption as well as heterogeneous effects by consumer types, depending on whether they use anti‐smoking products and their baseline level of cigarette consumption. Using the Nielsen homescan consumer panel and generalized difference‐in‐differences (GDD) method, we find that anti‐smoking products can induce cigarette smoking among moderate and heavy smokers. However, the ACA Medicaid expansion reduces cigarette smoking through channels other than anti‐smoking products. As a net result, the ACA Medicaid expansion leads to a reduction in smoking. Light smokers are the main beneficiaries of ACA Medicaid expansion—their average cigarette consumption reduces by over one pack per month. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bowley solution refers to the optimal pricing density for the reinsurer and optimal ceded loss for the insurer when there is a monopolistic reinsurer. In a sequential game, the reinsurer first sets the pricing kernel, and thereafter the insurer selects the reinsurance contract given the pricing kernel. In this article, we study Bowley solutions under asymmetric information on the insurer's risk preferences where the identity of the insurer is unknown to the reinsurer. By assuming that the insurer adopts a Value-at-Risk measure or a convex distortion risk measure, the optimal pricing kernel for the insurer and the optimal ceded loss function for the reinsurer are determined. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we assess the relevance of decreasing information asymmetry on life and non-life insurance consumption, by using data from 48 African countries during the period 2004–2014. Reduced information asymmetry is proxied by information sharing offices, namely: public credit registries and private credit bureaus. The empirical evidence is based on the Generalized Method of Moments. The findings show that information sharing offices increase insurance consumption with a comparatively higher magnitude in life insurance penetration, relative to non-life insurance penetration. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]