IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/insuma/v83y2018icp47-58.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dividends: From refracting to ratcheting

Author

Listed:
  • Albrecher, Hansjörg
  • Bäuerle, Nicole
  • Bladt, Martin

Abstract

In this paper we consider an alternative dividend payment strategy in risk theory, where the dividend rate can never decrease. This addresses a concern that has often been raised in connection with the practical relevance of optimal classical dividend payment strategies of barrier and threshold type. We study the case where once during the lifetime of the risk process the dividend rate can be increased and derive corresponding formulas for the resulting expected discounted dividend payments until ruin. We first consider a general spectrally-negative Lévy risk model, and then refine the analysis for a diffusion approximation and a compound Poisson risk model. It is shown that for the diffusion approximation the optimal barrier for the ratcheting strategy is characterized by an unexpected relation to the case of refracted dividend payments. Finally, numerical illustrations for the diffusion case indicate that with such a simple ratcheting dividend strategy the expected value of discounted dividends can already get quite close to the respective value of the refracted dividend strategy, the latter being known to be optimal among all admissible dividend strategies.

Suggested Citation

  • Albrecher, Hansjörg & Bäuerle, Nicole & Bladt, Martin, 2018. "Dividends: From refracting to ratcheting," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 47-58.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:insuma:v:83:y:2018:i:c:p:47-58
    DOI: 10.1016/j.insmatheco.2018.09.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167668718301410
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.insmatheco.2018.09.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philip H. Dybvig, 1995. "Dusenberry's Ratcheting of Consumption: Optimal Dynamic Consumption and Investment Given Intolerance for any Decline in Standard of Living," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(2), pages 287-313.
    2. Asmussen, Soren & Taksar, Michael, 1997. "Controlled diffusion models for optimal dividend pay-out," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 1-15, June.
    3. Yin, Chuancun & Wen, Yuzhen & Zhao, Yongxia, 2014. "On The Optimal Dividend Problem For A Spectrally Positive Lévy Process," ASTIN Bulletin, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(3), pages 635-651, September.
    4. Hans Gerber & Elias Shiu, 1998. "On the Time Value of Ruin," North American Actuarial Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 48-72.
    5. Avanzi, Benjamin & Wong, Bernard, 2012. "On a mean reverting dividend strategy with Brownian motion," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 229-238.
    6. Chuancun Yin & Yuzhen Wen & Yongxia Zhao, 2013. "On the optimal dividend problem for a spectrally positive Levy process," Papers 1302.2231, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2014.
    7. Lin, X.Sheldon & Pavlova, Kristina P., 2006. "The compound Poisson risk model with a threshold dividend strategy," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 57-80, February.
    8. Benjamin Avanzi, 2009. "Strategies for Dividend Distribution: A Review," North American Actuarial Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 217-251.
    9. Hans Gerber & Elias Shiu, 2006. "On Optimal Dividend Strategies In The Compound Poisson Model," North American Actuarial Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(2), pages 76-93.
    10. Bäuerle, Nicole & Jaśkiewicz, Anna, 2017. "Optimal dividend payout model with risk sensitive preferences," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 82-93.
    11. Avanzi, Benjamin & Pérez, José-Luis & Wong, Bernard & Yamazaki, Kazutoshi, 2017. "On optimal joint reflective and refractive dividend strategies in spectrally positive Lévy models," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 148-162.
    12. Bäuerle, Nicole & Jaśkiewicz, Anna, 2015. "Risk-sensitive dividend problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 242(1), pages 161-171.
    13. Albrecher, Hansjörg & Borst, Sem & Boxma, Onno & Resing, Jacques, 2009. "The tax identity in risk theory -- a simple proof and an extension," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 304-306, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hansjoerg Albrecher & Pablo Azcue & Nora Muler, 2020. "Optimal ratcheting of dividends in a Brownian risk model," Papers 2012.10632, arXiv.org.
    2. Hansjoerg Albrecher & Pablo Azcue & Nora Muler, 2022. "Optimal dividends under a drawdown constraint and a curious square-root rule," Papers 2206.12220, arXiv.org.
    3. Leonie Violetta Brinker, 2021. "Minimal Expected Time in Drawdown through Investment for an Insurance Diffusion Model," Risks, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-18, January.
    4. Bahman Angoshtari & Erhan Bayraktar & Virginia R. Young, 2018. "Optimal Dividend Distribution Under Drawdown and Ratcheting Constraints on Dividend Rates," Papers 1806.07499, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2019.
    5. Hansjoerg Albrecher & Pablo Azcue & Nora Muler, 2019. "Optimal ratcheting of dividends in insurance," Papers 1910.06910, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2021.
    6. Hansjörg Albrecher & Pablo Azcue & Nora Muler, 2023. "Optimal dividends under a drawdown constraint and a curious square-root rule," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 341-400, April.
    7. Chonghu Guan & Zuo Quan Xu, 2023. "Optimal ratcheting of dividend payout under Brownian motion surplus," Papers 2308.15048, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2024.
    8. Piotr Jaworski & Kamil Liberadzki & Marcin Liberadzki, 2021. "On Write-Down/ Write-Up Loss Absorbing Instruments," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(1), pages 1204-1219.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chonghu Guan & Jiacheng Fan & Zuo Quan Xu, 2023. "Optimal dividend payout with path-dependent drawdown constraint," Papers 2312.01668, arXiv.org.
    2. Chonghu Guan & Zuo Quan Xu, 2023. "Optimal ratcheting of dividend payout under Brownian motion surplus," Papers 2308.15048, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2024.
    3. Feng, Runhuan, 2009. "On the total operating costs up to default in a renewal risk model," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 305-314, October.
    4. Boxma, Onno & Frostig, Esther, 2018. "The dual risk model with dividends taken at arrival," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 83-92.
    5. Yin, Chuancun & Yuen, Kam Chuen, 2011. "Optimality of the threshold dividend strategy for the compound Poisson model," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 81(12), pages 1841-1846.
    6. Noba, Kei, 2023. "On the optimality of the refraction–reflection strategies for Lévy processes," Stochastic Processes and their Applications, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 174-217.
    7. Hansjoerg Albrecher & Pablo Azcue & Nora Muler, 2020. "Optimal ratcheting of dividends in a Brownian risk model," Papers 2012.10632, arXiv.org.
    8. Liang, Zhibin & Young, Virginia R., 2012. "Dividends and reinsurance under a penalty for ruin," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 437-445.
    9. Yang, Hu & Zhang, Zhimin, 2009. "The perturbed compound Poisson risk model with multi-layer dividend strategy," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 70-78, January.
    10. Zhou, Zhou & Jin, Zhuo, 2020. "Optimal equilibrium barrier strategies for time-inconsistent dividend problems in discrete time," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 100-108.
    11. Yang, Hu & Zhang, Zhimin, 2008. "Gerber-Shiu discounted penalty function in a Sparre Andersen model with multi-layer dividend strategy," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 984-991, June.
    12. Cheung, Eric C.K., 2011. "A generalized penalty function in Sparre Andersen risk models with surplus-dependent premium," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 384-397, May.
    13. Ying Shen & Chuancun Yin & Kam Chuen Yuen, 2011. "Alternative approach to the optimality of the threshold strategy for spectrally negative Levy processes," Papers 1101.0446, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2014.
    14. Lin, X. Sheldon & Sendova, Kristina P., 2008. "The compound Poisson risk model with multiple thresholds," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 617-627, April.
    15. Chi, Yichun & Lin, X. Sheldon, 2011. "On the threshold dividend strategy for a generalized jump-diffusion risk model," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 326-337, May.
    16. Runhuan Feng & Hans Volkmer & Shuaiqi Zhang & Chao Zhu, 2011. "Optimal Dividend Payments for the Piecewise-Deterministic Poisson Risk Model," Papers 1106.2781, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2014.
    17. Eric C. K. Cheung & David Landriault, 2012. "On a Risk Model with Surplus-dependent Premium and Tax Rates," Methodology and Computing in Applied Probability, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 233-251, June.
    18. Yuen, Kam C. & Wang, Guojing & Li, Wai K., 2007. "The Gerber-Shiu expected discounted penalty function for risk processes with interest and a constant dividend barrier," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 104-112, January.
    19. Czarna, Irmina & Pérez, José-Luis & Yamazaki, Kazutoshi, 2018. "Optimality of multi-refraction control strategies in the dual model," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 148-160.
    20. Hansjörg Albrecher & Pablo Azcue & Nora Muler, 2023. "Optimal dividends under a drawdown constraint and a curious square-root rule," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 341-400, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:insuma:v:83:y:2018:i:c:p:47-58. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505554 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.