When firms approach distress, whether they engage in asset substitution (risk shifting) or rebuild equity (risk management) may depend on their access to capital markets. The property-casualty insurance industry has two features that make it ideal for testing this hypothesis: (1) the main losses...

Risk transfer is a key risk and capital management tool for insurance companies. Transferring risk between insurers is used to mitigate risk and manage capital re- quirements. We investigate risk transfer in the context of a network environment of insurers and consider capital costs and capital...