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Article: An empirical study on the lapse rate: the cointegration approach.
- Article from:
- Journal of Risk and Insurance
- Article date:
- September 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 American Risk and Insurance Association, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ABSTRACT
We use the cointegration technique to reexamine the contending lapse rate hypotheses: the emergency fund hypothesis and the interest rate hypothesis. We find that the unemployment rate affects the lapse rate in both the long and short run, whereas the interest rate causes variations in the lapse rate mainly in the long run. This evidence seems to be in favor of the emergency fund hypothesis. However, according to the impulse response analysis of the estimated error-correction model, the interest rate overwhelms the unemployment rate on the overall impact on the dynamics of lapse rate. In other words, the interest rate hypothesis is favored against the ...