We examine whether and to what extent consolidation in the U.S. health insurance industry is leading to higher employer-sponsored insurance premiums. We make use of a proprietary, panel dataset of employer-sponsored healthplans enrolling over 10 million Americans annually between 1998 and 2006 to explore the relationship between premium growth and changes in market concentration. We exploit the...

General Equilibrium asset pricing models have a difficult time simultaneously delivering a sizable equity premium, a low and counter-cyclical real risk free rate, as well as cyclical variation in return volatility. To explain these stylized facts, this paper introduces occasionally binding financing constraints that impede producers’ ability to invest in an otherwise standard real business cycl...

A method for computing forward-looking market risk premium is developed in this paper. We first derive a theoretical expression that links forward-looking risk premium to investors’ risk aversion and forward-looking volatility, skewness and kurtosis of cumulative return. In addition, investors’ risk aversion is theoretically linked to volatility spread, defined as the gap between the risk-neutr...

this research applies and compares the market leverage lally method, ibbotson and sinquefield method and siegel method, to present alternative measures for market risk premium (mrp) estimation and test forecasting power of these methods in calculating expected rate of return. the higher level of leverage implies greater risk of investment in a specified stock, so higher return is expected by in...

In a recent paper, Baillie and Bollerslev (1989) using daily data from 1980 to 1985, identified six common stochastic trends in a vector of seven nominal exchange rates implying the existence of one cointegrating vector. Cointegration implies that (Granger) causality must run in at least one direction, that is, at least one of the exchange rates is predictable using current available informatio...

This study aimed to present a model for portfolio risk premium assessment of companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange. In order to achieve this purpose, monthly data of 150 companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during 2007-2017 was used. In this study, the predictive powers of FamaFrench three-factor model [11], Carhart four-factor model [1], Fama - French five-factor model [24], Brousseau...

We provide an equilibrium asset pricing formula under moral hazard on the assumption of a power utility function and an endogenous riskless rate. Moral hazard is defined here as a firm’s change of measure that is incontractible. We show explicitly in closed form that moral hazard distorts asset prices by (1) moving the market price of diffusive risk in the opposite direction to an investor’s ma...

The market for interest rate swaps has grown consistently since its inception. Swaps involve “swapping” fixed interest rate debt for variable rate debt. We explain this growth using a game theoretic model. We focus on managerial and owner compensation differences under swaps and open market restructuring. We conclude that swaps occur because the swap market incorporates information about the fi...

Rapidly rising health insurance costs continue to strain the budgets of U.S. families and employers. This issue brief analyzes changes in private employer-based health premiums and deductibles for all states from 2003 to 2010, and finds total premiums for family coverage increased 50 percent across states and employee annual share of premiums increased by 63 percent over these seven years. At t...