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We develop a model to estimate salary-based premiums for pension benefit guarantees by simultaneously considering a stochastic interest rate and three practical pension plan termination conditions. We show the relationship among premium rates, a plan’s funding level, sponsoring firm’s capital position, early lapse, and a participant’s years of service. We also show how the regulatory intervention policy interacts with a plan’s funding level and a sponsor’s capital position and how it affects the pension insurance cost.

This study develops a multi-period structural model to value bank subordinated debt (subdebt) under different regulatory policies. The model provides a complete framework for analyzing how various factors, such as credit and interest rate risks, bank characteristics, and regulatory policies, affect subdebt prices and yield spreads. It finds that the implementation of Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) will raise subdebt prices and lower subdebt spreads, while capital forbearance will have the opposite effects. Also, subdebt spreads are less sensitive to bank risk when PCA is imposed than when capital forbearance occurs. The results of the paper suggest that enhancing market discipline through giving subdebt investors more rights to force timely reorganization of weak banks will reduce the subdebt spreads required by investors.

The new Basel Accord (known as Basel II) attempts to introduce more risk-sensitive capital requirements. We propose a multiperiod deposit insurance pricing model that incorporates specific regulatory capital requirements and the possibility of capital forbearance and moral hazard. We estimate the cost of deposit insurance under alternative regulation regimes based on the building block approach of the 1988 Basel Accord (known as Basel I) and internal model-based (IMB) capital regulation. In contrast to the building block of Basel I, Basel II's IMB capital regulation links more closely the capital requirement to a bank's actual risk. We develop a multiperiod pricing model while incorporating the effects of capital forbearance and moral hazard. The fairly-priced premium rates are computed by assuming that a bank's asset value follows a GARCH process. In contrast to previous studies based on the building block capital standard, we find that forbearance and the potential moral hazard behavior will not increase the cost of deposit insurance in the scheme of Basel II's IMB capital regulation.