C41 - Duration Analysis; Optimal Timing StrategiesReturn

An ageing European population and, therefore, a rising dependency ratio of retirees to the working population, strongly suggests that a pension funding gap will be a key social issue in future. Yet many older people have significant real estate assets that they could access using equity release products. They could sell their assets in exchange for lifelong or temporary monthly payments. Equity release products are relatively new to Poland, but are not yet offered by commercial banks in Czechia and Slovakia. This paper estimates the potential benefits of marriage reverse annuity, and reverse mortgage contracts, using the Svensson model function, and empirical property data from selected Czech, Slovak and Polish cities. The results are also compared to the average pension of inhabitants in the selected cities. It is shown that there is substantial scope for boosting retirement income in all the cases considered, though the precise size of the increase depends on factors such as contract buyers' age and life expectancy, the value of their assets, the payment consequences of a spouse's death, and contract suppliers' pricing policies.

The paper examines the duration of unemployment in the Czech Republic in the three selected years (2008, 2010 and 2014). It is based on the Czech Statistical Office data collected from the Labour Force Sample Survey. Lognormal probability distribution (unimodal positively skewed heavy-tailed distribution) is used in the Accelerated Failure Time regression model including the following factor explanatory variables: years (three levels, 2008, 2010, 2014), gender (two levels), education (four levels), five-year age groups (nine levels) and municipality size (five levels). Apart from this parametric model, Turnbull's nonparametric estimator of the survival function is evaluated for subsamples defined by the year, gender and education. The effects of education and gender - a strong positive one of the former and less significant one of the latter, respectively - are quantified and assessed.