The Economic Effects of Federal Participation in Terrorism Risk

The catastrophic terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 caused unprecedented insured losses. While the insurance industry covered these losses, it also took swift steps to limit its exposure to such risks in the future. In response to ensuing market dislocations, the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) was passed in 2002. The law temporarily requires primary insurers to offer terrorism coverage and creates a federal "backstop" to limit losses on such coverage. In anticipation of the program's scheduled expiration, and to inform debate on its possible extension, this article analyzes market developments in the wake of 9/11 and the passage of TRIA. We find that to date, TRIA has facilitated private sector participation in the market for terrorism insurance by lending structure to an otherwise ill-defined risk. While alternative terrorism risk bearing mechanisms are evolving, none appear ready to replace federal involvement presently. We conclude that a continuation of TRIA for a period of time would enhance U.S. economic performance in the near term. Failing to extend TRIA in the near term would result in decreased economic performance absent another major terrorist attack and greater instability, job loss, and bankruptcy in the event of another attack.     

An empirical analysis of the economic impact of federal terrorism reinsurance

This paper examines the role of the federal government in the market for terrorism reinsurance. We investigate the stock price response of affected industries to a sequence of 13 events culminating in the enactment of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) of 2002. In the industries most likely to be affected by TRIA—banking, construction, insurance, real estate investment trusts, transportation, and public utilities-the stock price effect was primarily negative. The Act was at best value-neutral for property-casualty insurers because it eliminated the option not to offer terrorism insurance. The negative response of the other industries may be attributable to the Act's impeding more efficient private market solutions, failing to address nuclear, chemical, and biological hazards, and reducing market expectations of federal assistance following future terrorist attacks.     

美国恐怖主义风险保险立法研究

美国9.11恐怖袭击事件发生后,美国保险市场一度出现混乱:由于恐怖袭击风险的不可保性,私人保险市场的保险人纷纷把恐怖袭击风险从工商企事业保险的保险责任中删除,这种状况直到布什总统签署了《恐怖主义风险保险法》后才停止。本文重点研究了该法案的主要内容,并对该法案的特点和市场效果做了分析     

How Does the Corporate World Cope with Mega‐Terrorism? Puzzling Evidence from Terrorism Insurance Markets

Terrorist attacks that have succeeded abroad since 2001, as well as others that were prevented, indicate that the threat of a large‐scale attack is real and will be with us for a long time. Focusing on the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, this article analyzes the role that insurance can play in providing commercial enterprises with financial protection against the economic consequences of major terrorist attacks. The article begins by explaining the design and key features of terrorism insurance programs operating today in each of the three countries (TRIA in the U.S., Pool Re in the U.K., and Extremus in Germany). The authors then provide a detailed comparative analysis of the evolution of prices and take‐up rates (based on as yet unpublished data), with particular attention to financial institutions. For those who think the U.S. is the most likely target for mega‐terrorism, the findings are somewhat puzzling. On average, for example, companies in the U.S. do not pay even half as much for comparable coverage under TRIA as companies pay in Germany under Extremus, which raises the questions: Is terrorism coverage under the U.S. insurance program now drastically underpriced? If so, what would be the likely consequences of another large‐scale attack in the U.S.? On the demand side, the authors observe a dramatic increase in take‐up rates in the U.S. since 2003, revealing increased corporate concern. By contrast, the market penetration in Germany remains remarkably low. A better understanding of these programs and of the recent evolution of terrorism insurance markets in the U.S. and Europe should help corporate and government decision makers develop more effective protection against the economic consequences of mega‐terrorism.     

The Cost of Pension Insurance

This article estimates the cost of the federal pension insurance program. Pension insurance claims have an important market‐risk component, which means that the cost of the exposure cannot be estimated by discounting future claims by the risk‐free rate. Moreover, owing to the complexity of the insurance contract, its price cannot be estimated with known options formulas without introducing an error of nonquantifiable magnitude. To circumvent these problems, we model the insurance program in its full complexity and use a Monte Carlo method. By hedging the exposure with a dynamic premium policy that offloads the market risk to the insureds, one can calculate the risk‐free, or actuarial, cost of that policy. One can also characterize the nature of the subsidy and its structure across insured plans. Finally, we provide an estimate of the implicit cost of the hedge function that taxpayers currently are providing for zero remuneration. The model shows that simple contingent claims models of pension insurance result in a price that is about triple the true market cost of the insurance, and that pension insurance models that ignore market risk understate the cost by half. The solution demonstrates the broad characteristics that might characterize a credible private‐sector version of pension insurance.     

农业保险可以减轻自然灾害对农业经济的负面影响吗?

建立融合自然灾害、农业保险以及道德风险的动态模型.模型显示:自然灾害会降低农业产出,而农业保险可以降低自然灾害对农业生产的负面影响,但前提是道德风险的影响较小.实证表明,每增加1元农业保险保费对应的保障水平,可以降低由自然灾害导致的第一产业产出约8.19元的损失.同时,未发现农业保险市场在省级加总层面存在显著的道德风险.     

Protecting the Vulnerable: the Tradeoff between Risk Reduction and Public Insurance

In a risky world should governments provide public goods thatreduce risk or compensate the victims of bad outcomes throughsocial insurance? This article examines a basic question indesigning social protection policies: how should a governmentallocate a fixed budget between these two activities? In thepresence of income and risk heterogeneities a simple publicinsurance scheme that pays a fixed benefit to all householdsthat suffer a negative shock is an effective redistributionalinstrument of public policy. This is true even when a well functioningprivate insurance market exists, and so the role of public insuranceis not to correct a market failure. In fact, the existence ofa private insurance market means that the public system hasdesirable targeting properties—all but the poor and high-risktake up private insurance. The provision of public goods thatreduce risk for all should therefore be complemented with publicinsurance that (automatically) benefits those who are especiallyvulnerable.     

On the Implications of the Internet for Insurance Markets and Institutions

By most accounts, the Internet and related advances in information technology significantly affect financial services in general and insurance markets and institutions in particular. Coupled with other important trends such as globalization and regulatory reform, these changes are forcing far‐reaching changes upon the insurance industry and making it more competitive. This article focuses specifically on the implications of the Internet for insurance markets and institutions. The conventional wisdom that the Internet constitutes a sufficient condition for the disintermediation of traditional insurance distribution networks is called into question. To the extent that the Internet reduces transaction costs, it will create opportunities for new intermediaries as well as for existing ones. It will also influence product design, in some cases making it economically attractive to unbundle and repackage various forms of coverage. By removing entry barriers and reducing insurance costs, the Internet will also provide a private market solution to a major insurance regulatory concern—enhancing insurance affordability and availability.     

Natural Disaster Insurance and the Equity-Efficiency Trade-Off

This article investigates the role of private insurance in the prevention and mitigation of natural disasters. We characterize the equity‐efficiency trade‐off faced by the policymakers under imperfect information about individual prevention costs. It is shown that a competitive insurance market with actuarial rate making and compensatory tax‐subsidy transfers is likely to dominate regulated uniform insurance pricing rules or state‐funded assistance schemes. The model illustrates how targeted tax cuts on insurance contracts can improve the incentives to prevention while compensating individuals with high prevention costs. The article highlights the complementarity between individual incentives through tax cuts and collective incentives through grants to the local jurisdictions where risk management plans are enforced.     

Catastrophic Default and Credit Risk for Lending Institutions

Mortgage insurance does insure lenders against most ordinary default: that default induced by price movements in the overall housing market. However, private mortgage insurance typically excludes coverage of the truly catastrophic default resulting from such acts of God as fire, floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes, increasingly familiar in the United States in recent years. Often, these events affect a substantial portion of the houses within a particular neighborhood or region; and if disaster insurance or government aid is inadequate or nonexistent, the default is likely to occur, putting the credit institution at risk. This paper uses a two-state option model with an added jump process that accounts for the possibility and severity of a catastrophe. The paper then uses that information to determine the credit risk to a lender. In addition, this article goes beyond the standard market valuations typical of an option model in reporting the distribution of events that average up to the market cost of the lenders liability. This involves doing probability calculations not present in the usual valuation determinations of option pricing. The point of this article is that the option-pricing methodology provides the means for calculating such probability distributions, thus improving credit risk evaluations for the lender.     

Effects of Competition on Insurance Contract Formation

For an insurance transaction between a single risk-averse buyer and single risk-neutral seller with positive transaction costs, it is well known that the buyer will prefer a policy contract with an ordinary deductible. More detailed results demonstrate the Pareto optimality of an insurance contract characterized by a deductible (followed by coinsurance) for a single risk-averse buyer and single risk-averse seller. In the present work, we employ a market-game model to solve for the equilibrium insurance contract. This formulation, which approximates the behavior of excess property insurance and property catastrophe reinsurance markets, reveals that the equilibrium policy is described by full insurance up to a given policy limit, with no deductible or coinsurance. Our analysis shows further that this solution persists regardless of the numbers of buyers and sellers in the market, and in particular that the market-game equilibrium does not converge to a Pareto-optimal result because of boundary constraints on the number of sellers. Finally, we test our price-formation mechanism against an important generalization, and find that the policy-limit contract persists.     

Prämienanpassungen im Risikoklassenmodell der Privaten Krankenversicherung

In Zähle (Blätter DGVFM 31:39–64, 2010), a risk class model for the portability of the reserves for increasing age in Germany’s private health insurance system was introduced. In the present article, this model is extended in such a way that also successive premium adjustments are taken into account. In our model, the current risk class of an insurant does not play any role for a premium adjustment. In fact, only the risk class, to which the insurant belonged at the beginning of the contract, matters for a premium adjustment. From a mathematical point of view, our model provides a neat solution for the problem of the portability of the reserves for increasing age. In particular, the presented model is a real extension of the conventional model of Germany’s private health insurance system insofar as the conventional model can be recovered by restricting to a single risk class. So the well-tried premium calculation principle will basically remain.     

Multidimensional private information,market structure,and insurance markets

We investigate whether selection based on multidimensional private information in risks and risk preferences can, under different market structures, result in a negative correlation between insurance coverage and ex post realization of risk. We show that, under perfect competition, selection based on multidimensional private information does not result in the negative correlation property, unless there is a sufficiently high loading factor. However, it is possible to generate the negative correlation property under monopoly when risk and risk preference types are sufficiently negative dependent. We also clarify the connections between important concepts such as adverse/advantageous selection and positive/negative correlation property.     

Catastrophe Bonds—Regulating a Growing Asset Class

As the severity of natural catastrophes continues to intensify, disaster risk management is becoming increasingly important. In order to expand the capacity of the insurance markets, insurers and reinsurers have utilized alternative risk financing mechanisms such as catastrophe (CAT) bonds. Although the CAT bond market has increased recently, past CAT bond defaults have demonstrated that there are still concerns relating to contract documentation and the collateral structure of the bonds. This article argues that additional regulation that addresses these contracting problems and financial risks would facilitate greater use of CAT bonds. Regulatory change should also include industry‐wide accounting and tax reforms that will further support risk management objectives and the growth of the market. If the CAT bond market continues to experience the growth that was witnessed in the past year and additional regulation is implemented, insurers, reinsurers and governments can benefit from the cost‐effective protection that the instruments may provide in the event of a mega‐catastrophe.     

债券保险发展进程及业务模式探索

我国信用债市场发展进入新时期,信用违约的常态化和高收益债券市场建立的需要催生了对信用风险管理和信用增级的需求,而债券保险正是满足这两种需求的有效手段。本文在借鉴债券保险发展的国际经验的基础上,立足我国债券市场与债券保险发展现状,指出了当前我国债券保险发展滞后源于制度建设落后、信用保护卖方保障不足等原因导致的盈利困难,并提出和论证了由保险公司提供结算型债券保险的新型保险模式。最后就当前我国债券保险发展存在的不足之处,从发展传统型债券保险和信用风险缓释工具两个角度提出了具体的政策建议。     

Collective Risk Management in a Flight to Quality Episode

Severe flight to quality episodes involve uncertainty about the environment, not only risk about asset payoffs. The uncertainty is triggered by unusual events and untested financial innovations that lead agents to question their worldview. We present a model of crises and central bank policy that incorporates Knightian uncertainty. The model explains crisis regularities such as market‐wide capital immobility, agents' disengagement from risk, and liquidity hoarding. We identify a social cost of these behaviors, and a benefit of a lender of last resort facility. The benefit is particularly high because public and private insurance are complements during uncertainty‐driven crises.     

Limited participation and consumption-saving puzzles: A simple explanation and the role of insurance

In this paper, we show that the existence of a large, negative wealth shock and insufficient insurance against such a shock could explain both the limited stock market participation puzzle and the low-consumption–high-savings puzzle. We then conduct an empirical analysis on the relation between household portfolio choices and access to private insurance and various types of government safety nets. The empirical results demonstrate that a lack of insurance against large, negative wealth shocks is positively correlated with lower participation rates and higher saving rates. Overall, the evidence suggests an important role of insurance in household investment and savings decisions.     

Health and Mortality Delta: Assessing the Welfare Cost of Household Insurance Choice

We develop a pair of risk measures, health and mortality delta, for the universe of life and health insurance products. A life‐cycle model of insurance choice simplifies to replicating the optimal health and mortality delta through a portfolio of insurance products. We estimate the model to explain the observed variation in health and mortality delta implied by the ownership of life insurance, annuities including private pensions, and long‐term care insurance in the Health and Retirement Study. For the median household aged 51 to 57, the lifetime welfare cost of market incompleteness and suboptimal choice is 3.2% of total wealth.     

Time inconsistency as a rationale for public unemployment insurance

A role for public unemployment insurance is developed based on the inability of the government to commit to a future rate of unemployment. This is illustrated using a model in which a minimum wage policy combined with unemployment insurance is welfare-improving. Unemployment insurance could be decentralized to the private sector if the government could commit to a minimum wage. However, if not, a government that acts in the interest of the workers will have an incentive to increase the minimum wage to exploit private insurers. In the absence of commitment, an equilibrium with private unemployment insurance will not exist.     

The welfare cost of unpriced heterogeneity in insurance markets

We consider the welfare loss of unpriced heterogeneity in insurance markets, which results when private information or regulatory constraints prevent insurance companies to set premiums reflecting expected costs. We propose a methodology which uses survey data to measure this welfare loss. After identifying some “types” which determine expected risk and insurance demand, we derive the key factors defining the demand and cost functions in each market induced by these unobservable types. These are used to quantify the efficiency costs of unpriced heterogeneity. We apply our methods to the US Long‐Term Care and Medigap insurance markets, where we find that unpriced heterogeneity causes substantial inefficiency.