We study finite maturity American-style stock loans under a two-state regime-switching economy. We present a thorough semi-analytic discussion of the optimal redeeming prices, the values and the fair service fees of the stock loans, under the assumption that the volatility of the underlying is in a state of uncertainty. Numerical experiments are carried out to show the effects of the volatility regimes and other loan parameters.

We propose a two-regime Markov switching copula to depict the evolution of mortality dependence. One regime represents periods of high dependence and the other regime represents periods of low dependence. Each regime features a regular vine (R-vine) copula that, built on bivariate copulas, provides great flexibility for modelling complex high-dimensional dependence. Our estimated model indicates that the years of recovery from extreme mortality deterioration and the years of health care reform more likely fall into the low regime, while the years in which extreme mortality deteriorating events break out and the peaceful years without major mortality-impacting events more likely fall into the high regime. We use a case study to illustrate how the regime-switching copula can be applied to assess the effectiveness of longevity risk hedge with different beliefs about future mortality dependence evolution incorporated.

This paper introduces the Fourier Space Time-Stepping algorithm to the valuation of variable annuity (VA) contracts embedded with guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefit (GMWB) riders when the underlying fund dynamics evolve under the influence of a regime-switching model. Mortality risk is introduced to the valuation framework by incorporating a two-factor affine stochastic mortality model proposed in Blackburn and Sherris (2013). The paper considers both, static and dynamic policyholder withdrawal behaviour associated with GMWB riders and assesses how model parameters influence the fees levied on providing such guarantees. Our numerical experiments reveal that the GMWB fees are very sensitive to regime-switching parameters; a percentage increase in the force of interest results in significant decrease in guarantee fees. The guarantee fees increase substantially with increasing volatility levels. Numerical experiments also highlight an increasing importance of mortality as maturity of the VA contract increases. Mortality has less impact on shorter maturity contracts regardless of the policyholder's withdrawal behaviour. As much as mortality influences pricing results for long maturities, the associated guarantee fees are decreasing functions of maturities for the VA contracts. Robustness checks of the Fourier Space Time-Stepping algorithm are performed by making numerical comparisons with several existing valuation approaches.

We study the optimal financing and dividend distribution problem with restricted dividend rates in a diffusion type surplus model, where the drift and volatility coefficients are general functions of the level of surplus and the external environment regime. The environment regime is modeled by a Markov process. Both capital injection and dividend payments incur expenses. The objective is to maximize the expectation of the total discounted dividends minus the total cost of the capital injection. We prove that it is optimal to inject capital only when the surplus tends to fall below 0 and to pay out dividends at the maximal rate when the surplus is at or above the threshold, dependent on the environment regime.

Texas dryland upland cotton yields have historically exhibited greater variation and more distributional irregularities than the yields of other crops, raising concerns that conventional parametric distribution models may generate biased or otherwise inaccurate crop insurance premium rate estimates. Here, we formulate and estimate regime-switching models for Texas dryland cotton yields in which the distribution of yield is conditioned on local drought conditions. Our results indicate that drought-conditioned regime-switching models provide a better fit to Texas county-level dryland cotton yields than conventional parametric distribution models. They do not, however, generate significantly different Group Risk Plan crop insurance premium rate estimates.

In this article, we consider the problem of computing the expected discounted value of a death benefit, e.g. in Gerber et al. (2012, 2013), in a regime-switching economy. Contrary to their proposed discounted density approach, we adopt the Laplace transform to value the contingent options. By this alternative approach, closed-form expressions for the Laplace transforms of the values of various contingent options, such as call/put options, lookback options, barrier options, dynamic fund protection and the dynamic withdrawal benefits, have been obtained. The value of each contingent option can then be recovered by the numerical Laplace inversion algorithm, and this efficient approach is documented by several numerical illustrations. The strength of our methodology becomes apparent when we tackle the valuations of exotic contingent options in the cases when (1) the contracts have a finite expiry date; (2) when the time-until-death variable is uniformly distributed in accordance with De Moivre's law.

We consider the optimal dividend control problem to find an optimal strategy under the constraint that dividend rates is restricted such that the expected total discounted dividends are maximized for an insurance company. The evolution of the reserve is modeled by a diffusion process with drift and volatility coefficients modulated by an observable Markov chain. We consider the regime-switching threshold strategy which pays out dividends at the maximal possible rate when the current reserve is above some critical level dependent on the regime of the Markov chain at the time, and pays nothing when the reserve is below that level. We give sufficient conditions under which such type of strategy is optimal for the regime-switching model.