Recent Developments of Pension Schemes in Germany: Present and Future Tasks in Conflict

The article provides an overview of the structure of pension protection in Germany. Recent changes in statutory pension insurance (the “1992 Pension Reform”), as well as changes concerning retirement ages and the present discussion on early retirement are considered. The article also provides an analysis of occupational pension schemes and of their different types and coverage. The problem concerning the long-term development of the pension system in Germany is discussed.     

The Determinants and Effects of Board Nomination Committees*

This article assesses the corporate governance-related antecedents of nomination committee adoption, and the impact of nomination committees’ existence and their composition on board independence and board demographic diversity. We conducted a longitudinal study of board composition amongst 210 Swiss public companies from January 2001 through December 2003, a period during which the Swiss (Stock) Exchange (SWX) introduced new corporate governance-related disclosure guidelines. We find firms with nomination committees are more likely to have a higher number of independent and foreign directors, but not more likely to have a higher number of female board members. Further, the existence of nomination committees is associated with a higher degree of nationality diversity but is not related to board educational diversity. We also find that nomination committee composition matters in the nomination of independent and foreign, but not of female directors. Our results suggest that understanding different board roles and composition require a multi-theoretical approach, and that agency theory, resource-dependence theory and group effectiveness theory help to explain different aspects of board composition and effectiveness. Finally, the article discusses the concept of diversity and appropriate ways to study diversity in a boardroom context. * The Editor acknowledges that Hans van Ees, Morten Huse, and Jonas Gabrielsson – convenors of the EURAM (European Academy of Management) Corporate Governance track in 2004 – acted as Co-Editors on this paper.     

Social policies for reducing demographically-induced costs in social security

The demographically-induced increases in the cost of social-security systems (especially pension and health-insurance schemes) that will develop over the next few decades are briefly outlined and the available policy options for coping with them are discussed. Examples of the possible effect of various policies in the FRG are presented. The importance of anticipatory action is stressed, particularly for systems like pension schemes where an individual's rights are built up through contributions made over a long period and where abrupt action could lead to perceived severe inequities or even hardship.     

Old–age security in Bhutan: From lump–sum payments towards a pension scheme

At present, Bhutan's old–age security still is mostly based on an extended family network. Formal old–age provision is mainly for civil servants, providing, however, only lump–sum payments. This paper analyses the present conditions and obvious deficits of the existing arrangements and outlines possibilities for introducing a pension scheme which provides regular (monetary) income in old age. Income in old age could be increased and costs could be reduced by transforming the existing provident fund totally or partly into a pension scheme. This can be combined with pay–as–you–go and funded elements.     

Nonparametric model checks in censored regression

Let M be a parametric model for an unknown regression function m. In order to check the validity of M, i.e., to test for m ∈ M, it is known that optinal tests should be based on the empirical process of the regressors marked by the residuals. In this paper we extend the methodology to censored regression. The asymptotic distribution of the underlying marked empirical process in provided. The Wild Bootstrap, appropriately modified to account for censhorship, provides distributional approximations. The method is applied to simulated data sets as well as tto the Stanford Heart Transplant Data.     

Fundamental Decisions for the Reform of Pension Systems

This paper outlines the fundamental options for the design of pension systems in any country. The financing and benefits structure is described, with particular reference to distribution policy objectives. The need for thorough preparation to back up decision-making is emphasized, together with the need to take into account the many and varied interactions with other institutions and fields, particularly the long-term effects of changes and the prevailing conditions in the country concerned. Reforms often involve long-term transitional arrangements, so that different forms of pension provision should not be compared in isolation, although this is often done when comparing pay-as-you-go financing and capital funding. Moreover, a close link can be established between contributions and the subsequent pension in state pay-as-you-go schemes as well as private, funded pension provision. Finally, in the decision-making process, more attention needs to be paid to the flow of information to decision-makers, citizens and the media in order to increase the acceptability of reform measures.     

How customer satisfaction with respect to price and quality affects customer retention: an integrated approach considering nonlinear effects

There is consensus in the marketing literature that satisfaction of customers concerning the perceived quality and pricing of products or services is critical for customer retention. In contrast, there is lack of empirical evidence about the exact functional relationship. Using parametric and nonparametric regression, this contribution empirically investigates whether and to what extent nonlinear effects of and interaction effects between both satisfaction dimensions affect customer retention. The empirical results do not only reveal complex nonlinear effects for those satisfaction-retention relationships, respectively, but also indicate strong interaction effects of both satisfaction dimensions on customer retention. Furthermore, nonparametric approaches prove to be more flexible than parametric approaches to model complex interactions.     

The CLT under right censorship and reporting delays

We extend the central limit theorem (CLT) under right censorship to the case when at the time of analysis we may have reporting delays. Under weak moment assumptions we derive an i.i.d. representation of the estimator, from which asymptotic normality easily follows.