Financial Economics Of Insurance

An authoritative and comprehensive graduate textbook on the modern insurance sector The traditional role of insurers is to insure idiosyncratic risk through products such as life annuities, life insurance, and health insurance. With the decline of private defined benefit plans and government pension plans around the world, insurers are increasingly taking on the role of insuring market risk through minimum return guarantees. Insurers also use more complex capital management tools such as derivatives, off-balance-sheet reinsurance, and securities lending. Financial Economics of Insurance provides a unified framework to study the impact of financial and regulatory frictions as well as imperfect competition on all insurer decisions. The book covers all facets of the modern insurance sector, guiding readers through its complexities with empirical facts, institutional details, and quantitative modeling. An up-to-date textbook for graduate students in economics, finance, and insurance Covers a broad range of topics, including insurance pricing, contract design, reinsurance, portfolio choice, and risk management Provides promising new directions for future research Can be taught in courses on asset pricing, corporate finance, industrial organization, and public economics An invaluable resource for policymakers seeking an empirical and institutional account of today’s insurance sector

Pt. 1. The economics of insurance and the macroeconomic role of insurance -- What is insurance and how does it differ from general finance? / Christian Thimann -- The macroeconomic role of insurance / Denis Kessler, Amélie de Montchalin, and Christian Thimann -- How the insurance industry manages risk / Denis Duverne and John Hele -- pt. 2. Financial stability and the possibilities of systemic risk -- Risks of life insurers : recent trends and transmission mechanisms / Ralph S.J. Koijen and Motohiro Yogo -- Measuring systemic risk for insurance companies / Viral V. Acharya, Thomas Philippon, and Matthew Richardson -- Measuring interest rate risk in the life insurance sector : the U.S. and the U.K. / Daniel Hartley, Anna Paulson and Richard J. Rosen -- pt. 3. Regulation -- How the insurance industry's asset portfolio responds to regulation / Bo Becker -- Spillover effects of risk regulation on the asset side to asset markets / Andrew Ellul, Chotibhak Jotikasthira, and Christian T. Lundblad -- A regulatory framework for systemic risk in the insurance industry / Felix Hufeld -- pt. 4. Open questions going forward from the insurance sector -- The big questions for the insurance sector : findings from a survey of insurance companies / Luca Pancaldi and Uwe Stegemann

Presenting theoretical foundations and empirical research, this text introduces the reader to the core issues and analytical tools of insurance economics, examining in detail a host of key factors including supply and demand, regulation and social insurance.

Economic and financial research on insurance markets has undergone dramatic growth since its infancy in the early 1960s. Our main objective in compiling this volume was to achieve a wider dissemination of key papers in this literature. Their significance is highlighted in the introduction, which surveys major areas in insurance economics. While it was not possible to provide comprehensive coverage of insurance economics in this book, these readings provide an essential foundation to those who desire to conduct research and teach in the field. In particular, we hope that this compilation and our introduction will be useful to graduate students and to researchers in economics, finance, and insurance. Our criteria for selecting articles included significance, representativeness, pedagogical value, and our desire to include theoretical and empirical work. While the focus of the applied papers is on property-liability insurance, they illustrate issues, concepts, and methods that are applicable in many areas of insurance. The S. S. Huebner Foundation for Insurance Education at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School made this book possible by financing publication costs. We are grateful for this assistance and to J. David Cummins, Executive Director of the Foundation, for his efforts and helpful advice on the contents. We also wish to thank all of the authors and editors who provided permission to reprint articles and our respective institutions for technical and financial support.

Written for advanced undergraduate and master’s level courses, this book builds from a base of asymmetric information issues to discuss a wide array of topics and is illustrated with some timely examples. Covers diverse issues such as risk aversion, expected utility, and moral hazard within the pure theory of insurance Provides a clear exposition of the necessary mathematics, a feature which cannot be found in readers on the topic Utilizes an undergraduate economics major level of math Uses the simplest economic models possible to keep the text intuitive Introduces more mathematically complex techniques such as basic optimization for students wishing to 'go further' in their analysis

This book examines the behavior of individuals at risk and insurance industry policy makers involved in selling, buying and regulation.