Natural catastrophes attract regularly the attention of media and have become a source of public concern. From a financial viewpoint, natural catastrophes represent idiosyncratic risks, diversifiable at the world level. But for reasons analyzed in this paper reinsurance markets are unable to...

In the standard model for insurance demand, the risk is totally exogenous and the insurance premium is paid for out of riskless wealth. This model yields results that are mostly in contradiction to everyday observation and have been used to question the pertinence of expected utility theory on...