Catastrophe Bonds,Reinsurance, and the Optimal Collateralization of Risk Transfer

Catastrophe bonds feature full collateralization of the underlying risk transfer and thus abandon the reinsurance principle of economizing on collateral through diversification of risk transfer. Our analysis demonstrates that this feature places limits on catastrophe bond penetration, even if the structure possesses frictional cost advantages over reinsurance. However, we also show that catastrophe bonds have important uses when buyers and reinsurers cannot contract over the division of assets in the event of insolvency and, more generally, cannot write contracts with a full menu of state‐contingent payments. In this environment, segregation of collateral—in the form of multiple reinsurance companies, as well as catastrophe bond vehicles—can ameliorate inefficiencies due to reinsurance contracting constraints by improving welfare for those exposed to default risk. Numerical simulation illustrates how catastrophe bonds improve efficiency in market niches with correlated risks, or with uneven exposure of buyers to reinsurer default.     

Catastrophe Bonds and Reinsurance: The Competitive Effect of Information-Insensitive Triggers

We identify a new benefit of index or parametric triggers. Asymmetric information between reinsurers on an insurer's risk affects competition in the reinsurance market: reinsurers are subject to adverse selection, since only high-risk insurers may find it optimal to change reinsurers. The result is high reinsurance premiums and cross-subsidization of high-risk insurers by low-risk insurers. A contract with a parametric or index trigger (such as a catastrophe bond) is insensitive to information asymmetry and therefore alters the equilibrium in the reinsurance market. Provided that basis risk is not too high, the introduction of contracts with parametric or index triggers provides low-risk insurers with an alternative to reinsurance contracts, and therefore leads to less cross-subsidization in the reinsurance market.     

巨灾债券的运作原理及在我国的应用

随着保险公司承担越来越多的风险,巨灾债券逐渐发展成为其分散风险的又一种工具。本文将巨灾债券的运作过程分为三个阶段,对其运作原理进行了分析,并介绍了巨灾债券的定价模型,为巨灾债券的定价提供一种方案：一种金融产品能否顺利发行取决于其发展的前景。本文最后分析了我国发行巨灾债券的必要性和可行性,并提出构建我国巨灾债券的相关建议。     

Inflation Risk in Corporate Bonds

We argue that corporate bond yields reflect fears of debt deflation. When debt is nominal, unexpectedly low inflation increases real liabilities and default risk. In a real business cycle model with optimal but infrequent capital structure choice, more uncertain or procyclical inflation leads to quantitatively important increases in corporate log yields in excess of default‐free log yields. A panel of credit spread indexes from six developed countries shows that credit spreads rise by 14 basis points if inflation volatility or the inflation‐stock correlation increases by one standard deviation.     

巨灾风险管理中的行业损失担保

行业损失担保是一种赔付主要由巨灾所造成的整个保险行业损失所触发的保险连结证券。与传统再保险相似,它也要事先确定合约的涵盖地域、灾害种类、责任限额和有效时间等。但它与传统再保险不同在于,赔付取决于两个损失触发条件,即购买者的实际损失和整个保险行业的损失。本文从行业损失担保的市场发展、定义与运行机制、精算定价等角度,对其进行了系统梳理分析,并把它与其他巨灾风险连接证券进行了比较。     

Financial Innovation in the Management of Catastrophe Risk

Like the preceding article, this article argues that the high costs of reinsurance present the opportunity for hedging instruments to be offered to primary insurers that are both competitive with current reinsurance and that offer investors high rates of return. But the combination of high reinsurance premiums and the vast capacity of the capital market for diversification is not sufficient to ensure the success of these new instruments. If new instruments such as catastrophe options and catastrophelinked bonds are to compete successfully with reinsurance, they must provide a cost-effective means of resolving incentive conflicts between the primary insurer and the ultimate risk bearer that are known as "moral hazard." Without an effective solution of this moral hazard problem, the use of past insurance loss data to estimate the potential returns for purchasers of catastrophe bonds and other such instruments will be misleading and unreliable.
As the author demonstrates, both traditional reinsurance and each of the new catastrophe hedging instruments presents insurance companies and other hedgers with the challenge of managing a different combination of moral hazard, credit risk, and basis risk. For example, traditional catastrophe reinsurance is subject to significant credit risk and moral hazard, but little if any basis risk. By contrast, both catastrophe options and bonds can be designed in ways that reduce moral hazard and credit risk, but at the cost of taking on some basis risk. The risk manager's task in such circumstances is to design an instrument that embodies the optimal, or cost-minimizing, trade-off among these three sources of risk.     

巨灾风险放大及其影响因素测度

巨灾风险放大是现代风险社会的显著特征。文章基于自然灾害学与灾害社会学理论融合视角,对巨灾风险放大机理及其影响因素进行了分析,并采取随机权神经网络方法,以中国地震灾害为例,对巨灾风险放大影响因素进行了测度。研究表明:巨灾风险放大是由自然与社会双重因素耦合而成的灾情“加重性”、“脱域性”、“加快性”和“延时性”复杂现象,巨灾风险放大程度由致灾因子破坏力、承灾系统脆弱性、承灾系统抗逆力和风险沟通有效度共同决定,且越来越取决于社会性因素。在巨灾风险管理实践中,既要合理避免遭遇破坏力强的灾害,降低风险的自然放大,也要从降低承灾系统脆弱性、提高承灾系统抗逆力、做好风险沟通的维度,降低风险的社会放大。     

Market Price of Insurance Risk Implied by Catastrophe Derivatives

Abstract

Insurance derivatives facilitate the trading of insurance risks on capital markets, such as catastrophe derivatives that were traded on the Chicago Board of Trade. Simultaneously, insurance risks are traded through reinsurance portfolios. In this paper we make inferences about the market price of risk implied by the information embedded in the prices of these two assets.     

政府在应对巨灾风险中的角色定位

当今世界,巨灾事故频发,各国政府为应对巨灾风险相继建立了巨灾风险保障制度,但是这些制度在运营过程中出现了一些问题,使得政府的投入与预想的效果相差甚远.本文重点分析了政府在参与应对巨灾风险组建巨灾保障制度的过程中,常用手段的利弊及遭遇的问题,以此来探讨政府在对应巨灾风险中应确立的合适角色定位.     

现金抵押贷款债券的定价与风险测量

作为资产证券化的一个重要组成部分,现金贷款抵押债券(CLO)在金融交易市场占据了很大的比重。而目前为止的对于该类产品的定价与风险测量,业界与理论界仍在探索之中。将现行的CLO产品定价方法进行了改良,对其输入参数进行了合理的修正,力求找出一种更加合适的定价方法,并在此基础上,对此类产品的市场风险敏感度进行测量。     

Reinsuring Climatic Risk Using Optimally Designed Weather Bonds

The aim of this paper is to determine the optimal structure of a weather bond, i.e. a bond whose coupons depend on the occurence of a weather event. The stress is put more on the structuration than on the simple pricing of the bond. Therefore, instead of looking only at the bond issue, we consider it as a part of a more general transaction, involving three agents: a firm, which wants to be hedged against its weather risk, an investor, which buys the bond and a bank, which has an intermediary key role. Then, we derive the optimal characteristics of the whole transaction. But the bond structure which is obtained, corresponds to a minimal structure: indeed, only the bond optimal price function and its optimal reimbursement level (amount which is paid back when an event occurs) can be determined while there is a degree of freedom in the choice of the optimal coupon. Therefore, this indeterminacy may be interpreted as a marketing tool and it could play an important role in the negotiation process between the issuer and the investor.     

巨灾风险管理中金融创新品种研究综述

创新是保险业发展的永恒主题,而保险风险管理技术的提升则是保险业可持续发展能力的重要象征。近年来,伴随着金融工程技术的推广,各类金融创新产品在保险业尤其是巨灾保险和寿险风险管理中得到了广泛应用,相关研究涉及品种介绍、效用评价、定价技术以及运作机制等诸多方面。     

Is Default Event Risk Priced in Corporate Bonds?

This article provides an empirical decomposition of the default,liquidity, and tax factors that determine expected corporatebond returns. In particular, the risk premium associated witha default event is estimated. The intensity-based model is estimatedusing bond price data for 104 US firms and historical defaultrates. Significant risk premia on common intensity factors andimportant tax and liquidity effects are found. These componentsgo a long way towards explaining the level of expected corporatebond returns. Adding a positive default event risk premium helpsto explain the remaining error, although this premium cannotbe estimated with high statistical precision.     

中小企业集合债券总体信用风险度量研究

中小企业集合债券总体信用风险既包括系统风险产生的周期性违约风险,又包括相互关联关系导致的传染性违约风险。首先通过对因素模型的改进构建模型Ⅰ,研究集合债券的周期性违约风险;在此基础上引入违约传染建立模型Ⅱ,分析违约传染对违约概率及违约相关性的影响,研究集合债券的总体信用风险。最后基于模型Ⅱ进行算例研究,得出结论：企业间的相互关联关系降低了其1次违约概率,增加了其多次违约概率即违约相关性。     

Original-Issue Systematic and Default Risk Pricing Efficiency of Speculative-Grade Bonds

We investigate whether primary market, original‐issue risk premiums on speculative‐grade debt are justified solely by expected defaults or whether these risk premiums also include other orthogonal risk components. Studies of secondary‐market holding period risk and return have hypothesized that risk premiums on speculative‐grade debt may be explained by bond‐ and equity‐related systematic risk and possibly other types of risk. Using an actuarial approach that considers contemporaneous correlation between default frequency and severity and first‐order serial correlation, we cannot reject the hypothesis that the entire original‐issue risk premium can be explained by expected default losses. This suggests that speculative‐grade bond primary markets efficiently price default risk and that other types of risk are priced as coincident as opposed to orthogonal risks.     

巨灾风险证券化中的操作风险及其控制途径

巨灾风险证券化是把巨灾保险风险转化为衍生证券,销售给金融市场上的投资者,以此实现巨灾保险风险向资本市场的分散转移。但受信息不对称、触发机制等因素影响,巨灾风险证券化这种复杂的技术手段也会引起一些操作风险,如道德风险、基差风险、信用风险等。通过完善信息披露机制、合理选择触发方式、强化巨灾证券的交易保证金要求、加强监管等措施,可以有效地降低巨灾风险证券化过程中的各种风险,促进其平稳健康发展。     

法治环境对企业债券信用风险影响

在"法与金融"框架下分析了法治环境对企业债券信用风险影响的机理,选取2005—2014年间在中国银行间债券市场发行与交易的企业债券为样本,基于我国各地区法治环境水平的差异进行了实证研究。理论分析与实证研究的结果均表明,法治环境较好的地区,企业债券信用风险较小,表明加强法治建设有助于改善投融资环境,帮助企业降低融资成本。法治环境的改善对降低企业债券信用风险的作用效果在国有企业比在民营企业表现更加明显,揭示出法治环境建设对市场经济体系建设的保障性作用。