天气衍生品的运作机制与精算定价

天气衍生品是为了规避天气风险给天气敏感行业带来收入的不稳定性而兴起的创新型风险管理工具,其实质是通过衍生合约对天气风险进行分割、重组和交易的证券化产品。不同于传统金融衍生品,天气衍生品的价值取决于温度、湿度或降雨量等天气指数。本文在分析天气衍生品市场发展的基础上,重点探讨了最常见的天气期货和天气期权的运作机制及其精算定价。     

Alpha or beta in the eye of the beholder: What drives hedge fund flows?

Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) alpha explains hedge fund flows better than alphas from more sophisticated models. This suggests that investors pool together sophisticated model alpha with returns from exposures to traditional (except for the market) and exotic risks. We decompose performance into traditional and exotic risk components and find that while investors chase both components, they place greater relative emphasis on returns associated with exotic risk exposures that can only be obtained through hedge funds. However, we find little evidence of persistence in performance from traditional or exotic risks, which cautions against investors’ practice of seeking out risk exposures following periods of recent success.     

商业银行转型与市场风险管理面临的挑战

由传统业务模式向现代业务模式转型,是商业银行保持可持续发展的必然要求和趋势,但商业银行在推进业务转型中可能遇到一定的合规与市场风险,值得监管者和风险管理部门关注,文章基于当前商业银行内部业务运作与外部市场环境的现状,以理财业务、债券承销业务与交易全球化为代表具体分析了其中的风险点,并提出相关对策建议。     

The impact of enterprise risk management on the marginal cost of reducing risk: Evidence from the insurance industry

We test the hypothesis that practicing enterprise risk management (ERM) reduces firms’ cost of reducing risk. Adoption of ERM represents a radical paradigm shift from the traditional method of managing risks individually to managing risks collectively allowing ERM-adopting firms to better recognize natural hedges, prioritize hedging activities towards the risks that contribute most to the total risk of the firm, and optimize the evaluation and selection of available hedging instruments. We hypothesize that these advantages allow ERM-adopting firms to produce greater risk reduction per dollar spent. Our hypothesis further predicts that, after implementing ERM, firms experience profit maximizing incentives to lower risk. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that firms adopting ERM experience a reduction in stock return volatility. We also find that the reduction in return volatility for ERM-adopting firms becomes stronger over time. Further, we find that operating profits per unit of risk (ROA/return volatility) increase post ERM adoption.     

Do Trading and Power Operations Mix?

The author uses the case of Constellation Energy to show the challenges, and pitfalls, of running an energy and power trading unit as a profit center within a large power company. Sophisticated trading and risk management operations do play important supporting roles in power companies that face competitive wholesale markets. The complicated dynamics of power prices and the complex operations of generation assets and supply obligations require careful assessment of risks and returns. Trading operations can help extract more value from physical assets and supply obligations. But problems are bound to arise when companies attempt to manage the trading function as a stand‐alone profit center. Determining the amount of capital required for proprietary trading portfolios and other elements of trading businesses is complicated. It is easy to underestimate the capital required and so exaggerate the profitability of trading. When profit center trading operations share a balance sheet with other business units—especially units with physical assets like generation—the natural tendency is for the trading operation to piggyback on the capital of the other units. The actual amount of capital consumed becomes apparent only in times of crisis. We have seen this mistake made repeatedly in the short history of trading operations in U.S. power companies. Only truly independent trading operations, with their own balance sheets, can be evaluated clearly and held accountable.     

Are Liquidity and Information Risks Priced in the Treasury Bond Market?

We provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of the effects of liquidity and information risks on expected returns of Treasury bonds. We focus on the systematic liquidity risk of Pastor and Stambaugh as opposed to the traditional microstructure-based measures of liquidity. Information risk is measured by the probability of information-based trading (PIN). We document a strong positive relation between expected Treasury returns and liquidity and information risks, controlling for the effects of other systematic risk factors and bond characteristics. This relation is robust to many empirical specifications and a wide variety of traditional liquidity and informed trading proxies.     

Interest Rate Risk Management in Major Finnish Firms

The interest rate policies of Finnish firms appear risk aversive, but hedging decisions are influenced by market view. Managers find they can forecast trends in interest rate development, and employ the forecasts in the choice of debt and hedging instruments. The use of risk assessment methods and hedging instruments are related to firm size but not to leverage. Most frequently employed hedging instruments are interest rate swaps and forward rate agreements. The respondents find their firms' interest rate risk management is successful, but performance is seldom measured against an explicitly defined benchmark.     

The Effect of Crossing‐Network Trading on Dealer Market's Bid‐Ask Spreads

This article provides new insights into market competition between traditional exchanges and alternative trading systems in Europe. It investigates the relationship between the trading activity of a crossing network (CN) and the liquidity of a traditional dealer market (DM) by comparing data from the SEAQ quote‐driven segment of the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and internal data from the POSIT crossing network. A cross‐sectional analysis of bid‐ask spreads shows that DM spreads are negatively related to CN executions. Risk‐sharing benefits from CN trading dominate fragmentation and cream‐skimming costs. Further, risk‐sharing gains are found to be related to dealer trading in the CN.     

Handling Weather Related Risks Through the Financial Markets: Considerations of Credit Risk, Basis Risk, and Hedging

The profits of many businesses are strongly affected by weather related events, and insurance against weather related risks (acts of God) has been a traditional domain for transfer of (certain) of these risks. Recent innovations in the capital market have now provided financial instruments to transfer and hedge some of these risks. Unlike insurance solutions, however, using these financial derivative instruments creates a situation in which the return to the purchaser of the instrument is no longer perfectly correlated with the loss experienced. Such a mismatch creates new risks which must be examined and evaluated as part of ascertaining cost effective risk management plans. Two newly engendered risks, basis risk (the risk created by the fact that the return from the financial derivative is a function of weather at a prespecified geographical location which may not be identical to the location of the firm) and credit risk (the risk that the counterparty to the derivative contract may not perform), are analyzed in this article. Using custom tailored derivatives from the over the counter market can decrease basis risk, but increases credit risk. Using standardized exchange traded derivatives decreases credit risk but increases basis risk. Here also the effectiveness of using hedging methods involving forwards and futures having linear payoffs (linear hedging) and methods using derivatives having nonlinear payoffs such as those involving options (nonlinear hedging) for the purpose of hedging basis risk are examined jointly with credit risk.     

The effects of risk‐taking tendency on risk choice and pre‐ and post‐decisional information selection

Ideally, people seek and select information about unfamiliar risks with which they are confronted, before they make a risk choice. This study investigated what happens when people do not have this opportunity. The main question was how risk‐taking tendency influences intuitive risk decisions and how this impacts subsequent information search and subsequent choices. In the present study, participants had to make a choice about an unfamiliar risk, either before or after they had had the opportunity to search for (risk‐promoting or risk‐averse) information. In the condition where they could only seek for information after they had made a choice, they had to reconsider their first choice and make a second risk choice. We expected that (1) risk‐taking tendency would impact people's risk choices, but only in the situation where they have little information. On the basis of cognitive dissonance theory, it was furthermore predicted that (2) risk‐taking tendency and (3) initial risk choice would affect risk information selection. Furthermore, we predicted that (4) the first risk choice and (5) the risk information selected would influence the subsequent risk choice. The results suggest that if people make a first, intuitive decision about an unknown risk, risk‐taking tendency has an effect on the choice, but that this does not happen when people can first select information. Risk‐taking tendency did not influence information selection, but initial choice did (although in another way than we expected). Furthermore, both the first risk choice and the risk information selected affected subsequent risk choices. These findings suggest that people often make initial intuitive decisions that are influenced by personality characteristics, and that are subsequently difficult to change.     

保险资金运用全面风险管理——基于机制建设的角度

保险资金运用对保险公司稳健经营具有支柱性作用。为保障实现保险公司经营目标,应充分研究保险资金特性,分析投资资产风险和内部管理风险,建立有效的总体风险管理制度、实施有力的风险具体控制措施。在当前风险管理现实条件下,科学投资决策和运作架构,强化交易流程控制和风险防范监测,完善激励约束机制,以持续推进保险资金运用全面风险管理具有较强的实践意义。     

Influences of individual-level characteristics on risk perceptions to various categories of environmental health and safety risks

Over the last five decades, social science researchers have examined how the public perceives the risks associated with a variety of environmental health and safety (EHS) hazards. The body of literature that has been emerged diverse both in the methodology employed to collect and analyze data and in the subject of study. The findings have confirmed that risk perceptions vary between groups of individuals as well as between categories of EHS risks. However, the extant literature on EHS risk perceptions has failed to provide empirical insights into how risk perceptions can be best explained according to the interplay of both (1) the category of EHS hazard appraised and (2) the prominent individual-level characteristics that best explain observed risk perception differences. This study addresses this deficiency in the literature by providing insights into the individual and cumulative roles that various individual-level variables play in characterizing risk perceptions to various categories of EHS risks including ‘agentic risks’ like street drug use and cigarette smoking, ‘emerging technological risks’ like nanoparticles and cloning, and ‘manufacturing risks’ like air and chemical pollution. Our data are drawn from the 2009 Citizens, Science, and Emerging Technologies national study of United States households that investigated public perceptions of EHS risks, traditional and emerging media use, and various individual characteristics like personal demographics, socioeconomic factors, and perceptual filters. The findings show that some categories of EHS risks like those associated with emerging technologies may be more easily predicted than other categories of risks and that individual-level characteristics vary in their explanative power between risk categories even among a single sample of respondents.     

Risk assessments at the Royal Netherlands Air Force: an explorative study

In this paper, differences in the assessment of mission risks and mission benefits between operators and members of the management level in the transport helicopter branch of the Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) are studied. Results were obtained from a risk analysis that was conducted in accordance with RNLAF procedures. The analysis suggests that the two organizational levels have a coherent perception on risks despite their hierarchical position. Perceived measures of control – controllability – seem to induce the inclusion or the exclusion of what is appeared to be a risk. The analysis also suggests that risk management tools may obscure these perceptual differences. Risk management tools may therefore not be sufficient to attain safe operations. In discussions and future studies on risk management and on hierarchical differences in risk perception, this is something to take well notice of. Also, managers and others involved in risk management need to recognize the implications of using risk management instruments that are based on simplified models of risk. This research adds to the risk management theory because it connects multi-dimensional risk theory with actual organizational risk management practice.     

Click or Call? Auction versus Search in the Over‐the‐Counter Market

Over‐the‐counter (OTC) markets dominate trading in many asset classes. Will electronic trading displace traditional OTC “voice” trading? Can electronic and voice systems coexist? What types of securities and trades are best suited for electronic trading? We study these questions by focusing on an innovation in electronic trading technology that enables investors to simultaneously search many bond dealers. We show that periodic one‐sided electronic auctions are a viable and important source of liquidity even in inactively traded instruments. These mechanisms are a natural compromise between bilateral search in OTC markets and continuous double auctions in electronic limit order books.     

国际结算和贸易融资风险的识别与控制

贸易融资较传统的流动资金贷款业务具有更大的市场适应能力.生产制造型企业贸易融资风险的主要影响因素有核心技术和装备情况、产品更新换代能力、国际品牌效应、人力成本.生产制造型企业资金流风险的主要影响因素有原材料采购与销售价格、结算方式、资产的流动性、盈利能力.贸易类企业融资风险的主要影响因素有上下游客户的稳定性、市场需求的稳定性、资金的可流动性.物流企业融资风险的主要影响因素有公司的收入及成本构成、应对市场价格变动的能力、上下游客户情况、企业的资金流.     

Survivor Swaps

A survivor swap (SS) is an agreement to exchange cash flows in the future based on the outcome of at least one survivor index. This article discusses the possible uses of SSs as instruments for managing, hedging, and trading mortality‐dependent risks. SSs are especially useful for insurance companies, but also offer other interested parties low beta avenues into the acquisition of mortality risk exposure. The article also investigates vanilla SSs in some detail, and suggests how their premiums and values might be determined in an incomplete market setting.     

融资融券和股指期货对中国股市的影响：国别经验和初步评估

通过比较部分国家和地区推出融资融券和股指期货对股票市场的影响，并就中国融资融券和股指期货相关政策法规设计对股票市场的影响以及股票市场可能出现的问题和风险进行初步评估，结果表明融资融券和股指期货能够在一定程度上提高市场流动性，且在推出初期可能会加大市场波动；但长期而言必将有利于市场的稳定；也会带来市场结构调整的进一步深化以及交易策略、产品等的创新；同时还将对风险监管、指数权重股的交易监管带来新的挑战，     

Good for one,bad for all: Determinants of individual versus systemic risk

We analyze a sample of large international banks in major advanced economies and examine the impact that bank-specific factors have on an institution's solvency risk and its contribution to systemic risk. We focus on the five categories that the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has recently proposed as indicators of systemic importance. Our findings suggest that unstable funding is the main factor driving systemic risk. Furthermore, the combination of significant trading activities with global presence appears to exacerbate spillover risks to the global financial system. Interestingly, whereas trading activities contribute to the build-up of correlated or ‘wrong-way’ risk they help to mitigate individual solvency risk. Conversely, a decentralized approach to liquidity management seems to alleviate individual solvency risk but amplifies the transmission of financial distress across the financial system. This suggests that a macro-prudential approach to financial regulation should focus not only on scaling up micro-prudential measures but also on enabling the efficient transfer of risk between financial institutions.     

跨期环境下的巨灾风险分担：一个比较分析

资本市场通过衍生品交易增强的管理风险能力,大大改善了其跨期风险分担功能。作为风险中介的再保险公司通过储备流动性的方式,在跨期风险分担方面具有比较优势,而传统的资本市场缺乏衍生品交易,更多地体现为跨地风险分担的功能。在资本市场的竞争压力下,直保公司和再保险公司都面临融资和风险转移问题,如果通过新的资本市场工具,将资产负债表上的成熟产品通过证券化的形式转移到资本市场上,那么资本市场将是有效率的。     

国际结算和贸易融资风险的识别与控制

贸易融资较传统的流动资金贷款业务具有更大的市场适应能力.生产制造型企业贸易融资风险的主要影响因素有核心技术和装备情况、产品更新换代能力、国际品牌效应、人力成本.生产制造型企业资金流风险的主要影响因素有原材料采购与销售价格、结算方式、资产的流动性、盈利能力.贸易类企业融资风险的主要影响因素有上下游客户的稳定性、市场需求的稳定性、资金的可流动性.物流企业融资风险的主要影响因素有公司的收入及成本构成、应对市场价格变动的能力、上下游客户情况、企业的资金流.