<p>Aggressive fiscal and monetary policies by governments of countries and central banks in developed markets could somehow push inflation to some very high level in the long run. Due to the decreasing of pension fund benefits and increasing inflation rate, pension companies are selling inflation-linked products to hedge against inflation risk. Such companies are seriously considering the possible effects of inflation volatility on their investment, and some of them tend to include inflationary allowances in the pension payment plan. In this dissertation we study the management of pension funds of the defined contribution type in the presence of inflation-recession. We study how the fund manager maximizes his fund&rsquo / s wealth when the salaries and stocks are affected by inflation. In this regard, we consider the case of a pension company which invests in a stock, inflation-linked bonds and a money market account, while basing its investment on the contribution of the plan member. We use a benchmarking approach and martingale methods to compute an optimal strategy which maximizes the fund wealth.</p>

This dissertation consists of two essays on the execution cost of financial markets. In the first essay, we study impacts of new block trading rules on two kinds of large trades, block trades (BTs) and splitting order trades (STs). We find some results with policy implications. First, targets traded in the block trading market are illiquid. The proportion of BTs (STs) is the decreasing (increasing) function of stock liquidity. Second, large orders are mainly executed by STs except for illiquid stocks, but investors prefer to trade in block trading market at times when trade size is large, probability of informed trading is lower and price volatility is mild. Third, under the new system, the conditional execution costs of BTs (STs) decline (do not decline) and the percentage of BTs (STs) increases (decreases).Fourth, BTs are uninformed with motivations of tax minimization, general trades and ownership transfer trades, while STs are information based. BTs for tax minimization (general trades) incur the lowest (highest) execution costs. Uninformed BTs incur higher execution costs than informed STs, reflecting ¡§premiums of trading with the specific counterparty¡¨ of BTs. Finally, simulation analyses confirm that the block trading market functions well especially for illiquid stocks. In the second essay, we attempt to provide evidence regarding the welfare effect of pre-trade transparency affected by investor and order types. In order to understand the effect of transparency on welfare, we need to explore investors¡¦ behavior adjustments (aggressiveness and order size adjustments) reacted to transparency. We find both individual and institutional investors are more willing to supply liquidity after transparency enhancement. Individual investors behave more aggressively and submit larger order as they supply and demand liquidity, while institutional investors are relatively conservative and submit smaller order in an open environment. We measure welfare of investors in terms of implementation shortfall, which is weighted average of price impacts and opportunity costs. Our main result is, on average, institutional and individual investors who demand immediacy benefit from pre-trade transparency, especially for institutional investors, while traders who supply liquidity are worse off except institutional investors. Intraday analysis further notices individual investors providing liquidity near the end of day lose most from transparency enhancement, while institutional and individual investors demanding liquidity win most in close interval.

This paper considers dynamic optimal portfolio strategies of utility maximizing investors in the presence of risk constraints. In particular, we investigate the optimization problem with an additional constraint modeling bounded shortfall risk measured by Value at Risk or Expected Loss. Using the Black-Scholes model of a complete financial market and applying martingale methods we give analytic expressions for the optimal terminal wealth and the optimal portfolio strategies and present some numerical results.

The paper investigates dynamic optimal portfolio strategies of utility maximizing portfolio managers in the presence of risk constraints. Especially we consider the risk, that the terminal wealth of the portfolio falls short of a certain benchmark level which is proportional to the stock price. This risk is measured by the Expected Utility Loss. We generalize the findings our previous papers to this case. Using the Black-Scholes model of a complete financial market and applying martingale methods, analytic expressions for the optimal terminal wealth and the optimal portfolio strategies are given. Numerical examples illustrate the analytic results.

<p>Aggressive fiscal and monetary policies by governments of countries and central banks in developed markets could somehow push inflation to some very high level in the long run. Due to the decreasing of pension fund benefits and increasing inflation rate, pension companies are selling inflation-linked products to hedge against inflation risk. Such companies are seriously considering the possible effects of inflation volatility on their investment, and some of them tend to include inflationary allowances in the pension payment plan. In this dissertation we study the management of pension funds of the defined contribution type in the presence of inflation-recession. We study how the fund manager maximizes his fund&rsquo / s wealth when the salaries and stocks are affected by inflation. In this regard, we consider the case of a pension company which invests in a stock, inflation-linked bonds and a money market account, while basing its investment on the contribution of the plan member. We use a benchmarking approach and martingale methods to compute an optimal strategy which maximizes the fund wealth.</p>

The aim of this thesis is to improve risk measurement estimation by incorporating extra information in the form of constraint into completely non-parametric smoothing techniques. A similar approach has been applied in empirical likelihood analysis. The method of constraints incorporates bootstrap resampling techniques, in particular, biased bootstrap. This thesis brings together formal estimation methods, empirical information use, and computationally intensive methods. In this thesis, the constraint approach is applied to non-parametric smoothing estimators to improve the estimation or modelling of risk measures. We consider estimation of Value-at-Risk, of intraday volatility for market risk, and of recovery rate densities for credit risk management. Firstly, we study Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) estimation. VaR and ES estimation are strongly related to quantile estimation. Hence, tail estimation is of interest in its own right. We employ constrained and unconstrained kernel density estimators to estimate tail distributions, and we estimate quantiles from the fitted tail distribution. The constrained kernel density estimator is an application of the biased bootstrap technique proposed by Hall & Presnell (1998). The estimator that we use for the constrained kernel estimator is the Harrell-Davis (H-D) quantile estimator. We calibrate the performance of the constrained and unconstrained kernel density estimators by estimating tail densities based on samples from Normal and Student-t distributions. We find a significant improvement in fitting heavy tail distributions using the constrained kernel estimator, when used in conjunction with the H-D quantile estimator. We also present an empirical study demonstrating VaR and ES calculation. A credit event in financial markets is defined as the event that a party fails to pay an obligation to another, and credit risk is defined as the measure of uncertainty of such events. Recovery rate, in the credit risk context, is the rate of recuperation when a credit event occurs. It is defined as Recovery rate = 1 - LGD, where LGD is the rate of loss given default. From this point of view, the recovery rate is a key element both for credit risk management and for pricing credit derivatives. Only the credit risk management is considered in this thesis. To avoid strong assumptions about the form of the recovery rate density in current approaches, we propose a non-parametric technique incorporating a mode constraint, with the adjusted Beta kernel employed to estimate the recovery density function. An encouraging result for the constrained Beta kernel estimator is illustrated by a large number of simulations, as genuine data are very confidential and difficult to obtain. Modelling high frequency data is a popular topic in contemporary finance. The intraday volatility patterns of standard indices and market-traded assets have been well documented in the literature. They show that the volatility patterns reflect the different characteristics of different stock markets, such as double U-shaped volatility pattern reported in the Hang Seng Index (HSI). We aim to capture this intraday volatility pattern using a non-parametric regression model. In particular, we propose a constrained function approximation technique to formally test the structure of the pattern and to approximate the location of the anti-mode of the U-shape. We illustrate this methodology on the HSI as an empirical example.

Univ., Diss.--Mannheim, 2003.

Magister Scientiae - MSc / Aggressive fiscal and monetary policies by governments of countries and central banks in developed markets could somehow push inflation to some very high level in the long run. Due to the decreasing of pension fund benefits and increasing inflation rate, pension companies are selling inflation-linked products to hedge against inflation risk. Such companies are seriously considering the possible effects of inflation volatility on their investment, and some of them tend to include inflationary allowances in the pension payment plan. In this dissertation we study the management of pension funds of the defined contribution type in the presence of inflation-recession. We study how the fund manager maximizes his fund's wealth when the salaries and stocks are affected by inflation. In this regard, we consider the case of a pension company which invests in a stock, inflation-linked bonds and a money market account, while basing its investment on the contribution of the plan member. We use a benchmarking approach and martingale methods to compute an optimal strategy which maximizes the fund wealth. / South Africa

This diploma thesis deals with transferring the risk of a insurance company to another subject. The basic requirement is to homogenize the selected insurance portfolio. The amount of capital required is determined by identifying and quantifying the risk. Adjusted indicator of Economic value added (EVA) determines the optimal ratio of the retention and the risk transferred. There are several factors that can affect the amount of the retained risk. The main objective is to determine the amount of the optimal retention itself and select the appropriate type of reinsurance. The recommendation is based on the current development of expenses on insurance claims.

The diploma thesis deals with current issues of risk management in a selected insurance company. The thesis is conceptually divided into two parts the literature recherche and the empirical part. The first section introduces the individual risks and the basic methods of the quantification of the risks which affect the functioning of commercial insurances. A new system of European insurance regulation, Solvency II, is also described. The empirical part of the diploma thesis deals with the risk quantification of the selected insurance company according to the standard and internal model. The thesis is concluded with the evaluation of the risk management in the selected insurance company and of the company preparedness for the regulatory regime Solvency II. Based on this quantification, the recommendations are put forward to improve the risk management of the selected insurer.