We examine how long-term life insurance contracts can be designed to incorporate uncertain future bequest needs. An individual who buys a life insurance contract early in life is often uncertain about the future financial needs of his or her family, in the event of an untimely death. Ideally,...

Whole life insurance plays an important role in household saving. However, empirical evidence on its determinants is scarce. This paper studies two natural experiments to identify the effects of tax incentives and bequest motives on life-insurance demand. An unanticipated tax reform in 2000...

The current literature on optimal forest rotation makes the assumption of constant interest rate. However, the irreversible harvesting decisions of forest stands are typically subject to relatively long time horizons over which interest rates do fluctuate considerably. In this paper we apply the...

The current literature on optimal forest rotation makes the unrealistic assumption of constant interest rate though harvesting decisions of forest stands are typically subject to long time horizons. We apply the Wicksellian single rotation framework to cover the unexplored case of variable and...

We use a Wicksellian single rotation framework to analyze the impact of the intertemporally fluctuating and stochastic mean-reverting interest rate process on the optimal harvesting threshold and thereby the expected length of the rotation period, when forest value is also stochastic following...