Journal of Risk and Insurance最新文献

This paper investigates the use of catastrophe (CAT) bonds as a risk management tool for wildfires. We introduce a set of Bayesian dynamic models designed to accurately represent wildfire losses, allowing a thorough examination of wildfire CAT bond pricing and hedge effectiveness. Our model captures crucial attributes of wildfire data, such as zero inflation, overdispersion, temporal fluctuations, and spatial dependence. Employing extensive quantitative analyses of US wildfire data, we highlight that CAT bonds can substantially mitigate tail risk associated with insurers' liability. Importantly, index-based CAT bonds, drawing their payouts from aggregate wildfire losses over a larger geographical scope than an insurer's operational area, also provide effective hedges. Our research underscores the potential of wildfire CAT bonds as an enhancement to traditional reinsurance strategies, offering insurers an improved means to manage and mitigate wildfire exposures amidst inherent uncertainties.

We propose a multiperiod insurance model under a bonus–malus system with two rate classes and consider an insured who has purchased full insurance for her losses. To explore the potential advantage of underreporting her insurable losses, the insured follows a barrier strategy and only reports lossses above the barrier to the insurer. We obtain a unique equilibrium declaration strategy in closed form for a risk-neutral insured who maximizes her expected wealth, and in semiclosed form for a risk-averse insured who maximizes her expected exponential utility of wealth, both over an exogenous random horizon. We find that the equilibrium barriers for the two classes are equal and strictly greater than zero, offering a theoretical explanation for the underreporting of insurable losses, a form of ex post moral hazard. Finally, we consider the case of three rate classes and show, through numerical examples, that the equilibrium barriers are not equal.

Using medical insurance (MI) to shift employees' health risks outside is an important risk management tool for modern firms. Existing studies usually treat firms' contributions to employees' MI only as a labor cost. However, contributing to MI also has indirect benefits, such as improved labor productivity and R&D innovation, which consequently increase corporate value. This paper studies the impact of firms' MI contributions for employees on corporate value, using social insurance collection system reform in China as a natural experiment. Results show that, first, the reform increases firms' contributions to employees' MI funds. Second, the increase has a positive impact on firms' market-to-book ratio. These effects can be explained by enhanced labor productivity, firm efficiency, and innovation. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the effects are more pronounced for firms in high R&D industries, areas with high pollution, or areas with better medical and labor supplies.

We explore whether life insurers use a unique reinsurance arrangement to manage assets tied to their regulatory capital. Typical reinsurance allows insurers to reduce their regulatory capital by transferring liabilities (reserves), and the associated assets, to reinsurers. With modified coinsurance (ModCo), insurers maintain control of their liabilities and assets while transferring regulatory capital requirements to the reinsurer. Holding fixed an insurer's reported capital, we find that ModCo allows insurers to report higher risk-based capital ratios. Insurers with ModCo are less likely to fire sale downgraded bonds. We also find suggestive evidence of regulatory arbitrage, as most ModCo is purchased from reinsurers in countries with low capital requirements or within the same insurance group.

Empirical evidence suggests that insurance groups allocate capital to members with better performance or growth prospects and use internal capital markets (ICMs) to protect the franchise value of less capitalized members. We propose and test an additional motivation for the use of ICMs—to manage regulatory scrutiny risk. We show that almost 50% of insurers at risk of facing additional regulatory scrutiny due to failing four Insurance Regulatory Information System (IRIS) ratios received sufficient internal capital to avoid enhanced regulation. Moreover, the likelihood and extent of internal capital allocation are related to regulatory scrutiny risk and the amount of capital allocated is typically just enough to avoid regulatory scrutiny. Time series evidence indicates that groups manage regulatory scrutiny risk by allocating capital toward affiliates when their pre-capital contribution IRIS ratio failures exceed three, and away from affiliates when they are no longer at risk of additional regulatory scrutiny.

I examine the design of optimal insurance contracts considering the possibility of government disaster relief payments. This work focuses on the impact of (risky and ambiguous) government disaster relief on the shape of optimal private insurance contracts. I demonstrate that the optimal insurance contract is a straight deductible contract in the case of a fixed probability of government relief. This result is robust to ambiguity in the probability of relief payments, even for ambiguity-averse decision makers. If government disaster relief becomes more likely for larger losses, then the optimal insurance contract features coinsurance above a deductible. I also extend this analysis to more general stochastic dominance relationships between disaster relief and loss magnitude.

This paper investigates retirees' optimal purchases of fixed and variable longevity income annuities using their defined contribution (DC) plan assets and given their expected social security benefits. As an alternative, we also evaluate using plan assets to boost social security benefits through delayed claiming. Using a calibrated life-cycle model, we determine that including deferred income annuities in DC accounts is welfare-enhancing for all sex/education groups examined. We also show that providing access to well-designed variable deferred annuities with some equity exposure further enhances retiree well-being, compared to having access only to fixed annuities. Nevertheless, for those facing the highest mortality rates, delaying claiming social security is mostly preferred, whereas those anticipating living longer than average will benefit more from using accumulated DC plan assets to purchase deferred annuities.

This paper investigates the relationship between female CEOs and insolvency risk of US property-casualty insurance companies. We show that female CEOs are associated with lower insurer insolvency propensity, higher z-score, and lower standard deviation of return on assets. These findings are robust to alternative econometric specifications to address potential endogeneity concerns and self-selection issues, including propensity score matching, the instrumental variable approach, and the difference-in-difference approach. Furthermore, we find that the impact of female CEOs on insurer insolvency risk is moderated by firm capitalization, the presence of female directors, and political conservatism of insurers' home states.

Using an exogenous drop in analyst coverage introduced by broker closures and mergers, we test for the causal impact of analyst coverage on corporate risk-taking, in an opaque industry. We document an increase in risk using several book-based and market-based risk measures, including tail and default risk measures. Results are driven by firms with stronger managerial risk-taking compensation incentives. The increase in risk is stronger in more opaque firms, and firms with weaker policyholder monitoring. Firm risk increases through at least one risk-taking action, such as investing firm assets in higher-risk bonds. Our study highlights the importance of stock analysts in affecting corporate risk-taking, especially in the presence of stronger managerial, compensation risk-taking incentives.