Equity Cost Induced Dichotomy for Optimal Dividends with Capital Injections in the Cramér-Lundberg Model

We investigate a control problem leading to the optimal payment of dividends in a Cramér-Lundberg-type insurance model in which capital injections incur proportional cost, and may be used or not, the latter resulting in bankruptcy. For general claims, we provide verification results, using the absolute continuity of super-solutions of a convenient Hamilton-Jacobi variational inequality. As a by-product, for exponential claims, we prove the optimality of bounded buffer capital injections (−a,0,b) policies. These policies consist in stopping at the first time when the size of the overshoot below 0 exceeds a certain limit a, and only pay dividends when the reserve reaches an upper barrier b. An exhaustive and explicit characterization of optimal couples buffer/barrier is given via comprehensive structure equations. The optimal buffer is shown never to be of de Finetti (a=0) or Shreve-Lehoczy-Gaver (a=∞) type. The study results in a dichotomy between cheap and expensive equity, based on the cost-of-borrowing parameter, thus providing a non-trivial generalization of the Lokka-Zervos phase-transition Løkka-Zervos (2008). In the first case, companies start paying dividends at the barrier b*=0, while in the second they must wait for reserves to build up to some (fully determined) b*>0 before paying dividends.

Optimal dividends and capital injection under dividend restrictions

We study a singular stochastic control problem faced by the owner of an insurance company that dynamically pays dividends and raises capital in the presence of the restriction that the surplus process must be above a given dividend payout barrier in order for dividend payments to be allowed. Bankruptcy occurs if the surplus process becomes negative and there are proportional costs for capital injection. We show that one of the following strategies is optimal: (i) Pay dividends and inject capital in order to reflect the surplus process at an upper barrier and at 0, implying bankruptcy never occurs. (ii) Pay dividends in order to reflect the surplus process at an upper barrier and never inject capital—corresponding to absorption at 0—implying bankruptcy occurs the first time the surplus reaches zero. We show that if the costs of capital injection are low, then a sufficiently high dividend payout barrier will change the optimal strategy from type (i) (without bankruptcy) to type (ii) (with bankruptcy). Moreover, if the costs are high, then the optimal strategy is of type (ii) regardless of the dividend payout barrier. We also consider the possibility for the owner to choose a stopping time at which the insurance company is liquidated and the owner obtains a liquidation value. The uncontrolled surplus process is a Wiener process with drift.

On the Padé and Laguerre–Tricomi–Weeks Moments Based Approximations of the Scale Function W and of the Optimal Dividends Barrier for Spectrally Negative Lévy Risk Processes

This paper considers the Brownian perturbed Cramér–Lundberg risk model with a dividends barrier. We study various types of Padé approximations and Laguerre expansions to compute or approximate the scale function that is necessary to optimize the dividends barrier. We experiment also with a heavy-tailed claim distribution for which we apply the so-called “shifted” Padé approximation.