There is a rich variety of tailored investment products available to the retail investor in every developed economy. These contracts combine upside participation in bull markets with downside protection in bear markets. Examples include equity-linked contracts and other types of structured...

Let X denote the loss initially assumed by an insurer. In a reinsurance design, the insurer cedes part of its loss, say f(X), to a reinsurer, and thus the insurer retains a loss If(X)=X-f(X). In return, the insurer is obligated to compensate the reinsurer for undertaking the risk by paying the...

This paper describes a simple and efficient method for determining the optimal portfolio for a risk averse investor. The portfolio selection problem is of long standing interest to finance scholars and it has obvious practical relevance. In a complete market the modern procedure for computing...

By formulating a constrained optimization model, we address the problem of optimal reinsurance design using the criterion of minimizing the conditional tail expectation (CTE) risk measure of the insurer's total risk. For completeness, we analyze the optimal reinsurance model under both binding...