We address the paradox that financial innovations aimed at risk-sharing appear to have made the world riskier. Financial innovations facilitate hedging idiosyncratic risks among agents; however, aggregate risks can be hedged only with liquid assets. When risk-sharing is primitive, agents...

In addition to premiums, investment income is one of the two main sources of capital for property-casualty (P/C) insurance companies. This study investigates short-term equity trading behavior of P/C insurers in the United States in 2007 and 2008, and finds that over 27 percent of non-group...

In this paper, we test the efficiency of least-squares Monte Carlo method to estimate capital requirements in life insurance. We choose a simplified Gaussian evaluation framework where closed-form formulas are available and allow us to obtain solid benchmarks. Extensive numerical experiments...

Financial stability is the key objective that sustains and empowers investments and economic groth, or scatters the opportunities when lacking. As growth translates to profitability, and profitability is dependent upon solvalibility, the need for a deep knowledge of all potential risks surfaces....

Government provision of a financial safety net for financial institutions has been a key element of the policy response to the current crisis, with governments extending existing guarantees and introducing new ones. These measures have been helpful in avoiding a further accelerated loss of...