WHERE'S THE CAT GOING? SOME OBSERVATIONS ON CATASTROPHE BONDS

This article provides an assessment of the current state of the market for catastrophe (or "Cat") bonds. Given the changes in insurance markets since September 11th, the demand for Cat bonds is likely to increase. For issuers, Cat bonds have the effect of transferring risks to the capital markets that would normally be underwritten by insurance or reinsurance companies. And as a substitute for insurance, Cat bonds have the potential to help issuers address problems such as lack of capacity and real risk transfer, cyclicality, and credit risk that are commonly associated with insurance and reinsurance markets. Investors value Cat bonds in part because of their low correlations with stocks and conventional bonds. Notable trends in the structuring of the products involve higher levels of risk transfer, longer-term contracts, and linkage to a portfolio of catastrophic risks.     

Load profiles and flexibility in operation of washing machines and dishwashers in Europe

While the energy generation system is changing towards the use of more renewable energies, the problem of how to deal with fluctuating energy supply is increasing. Smart appliances in households are often referenced as one possible solution, as their operation may be shifted in time and, thus, used to balance an unstable energy supply. The potential of such appliances has been studied to date mainly in pilot installations with a very limited number of participants or by making assumptions on what might be possible. With this work, a semi‐representative approach for 12 European countries was used to assess actual consumer habits for the use of washing machines and dishwashers which then could be used to calculate average load profiles for those appliances depending on the time of the day. Using these profiles, it is strait forward to calculate how much load may be shifted by those appliances in a demand response application. This allows aggregators or energy utilities to assign clear financial benefits to the shifting potential of those appliances. Consumers use the shifting of appliance operation already today for various reasons. Investigating these reasons allows to learn already a lot about the flexibility of consumers.     

So entstehen Hautprobleme bei Inkontinenz

Inkontinenz schw?cht die fragile Barrierefunktion der Altershaut - Gesunde Haut erfüllt eine Reihe wichtiger Schutzfunktionen. Mit zunehmendem Alter l?sst diese Schutzfunktion der Haut jedoch nach und sie wird besonders anf?llig für Sch?digungen durch Harn- oder Stuhlinkontinenz. Diese Risiken sollten bei der pflegerischen Versorgung beachtet werden, damit die Haut trotz Inkontinenz gesund bleibt.     

Geography,demography, and economic growth in Africa

This paper presents the effects of climate, topography, and natural ecology on public health, nutrition, demographics, technological diffusion, international trade and other determinants of economic development in Africa. The goal of this paper is to emphasize the need for intensified research on the issues at the intersection of ecology and human society. Geography was given emphasis because of three reasons: the minimal gain from another recitation of the damage caused by statism, protectionism and corruption to African economic performance; negligence of the role of natural forces in shaping economic performance; and tailoring of policies to geographical realities. The paper also discusses the general problems of tropical development and the focus of Africa's problems in worldwide tropical perspectives; demographic trends in Africa; use of standard cross-country growth equations with demographic and geographic variables, to account for the relative roles of geography; and the future growth strategies and the need for urban-based export growth in manufacturing and services. Lastly, the authors provide a summary of conclusions and discuss the agenda for future research.     

Adjoint-based Monte Carlo calibration of financial market models

Adjoint methods have recently gained considerable importance in the finance sector, because they allow to quickly compute option sensitivities with respect to a large number of model parameters. In this paper we investigate how the efficiency of adjoint methods can be exploited to speed up the Monte Carlo-based calibration of financial market models. After analyzing the calibration problem both theoretically and numerically, we derive the associated adjoint equation and propose its application in combination with a multi-layer method, for which we prove convergence to a stationary point of the underlying optimization problem. Detailed numerical examples illustrate the performance of the method. In particular, the proposed algorithm reduces the calibration time for a typical equity market model with time-dependent model parameters from over three hours to less than ten minutes on a usual desktop PC.