Natural disasters are an important source of vulnerability in the Caribbean region. Despite being one of the more disaster-prone areas of the world, it has the lowest levels of insurance coverage. This paper examines the vulnerability of Belize's public finance to the occurrence of hurricanes...

We model and measure simultaneous large losses of the market value of insurers to understand the impact of shocks on the insurance sector. The downside risk of insurers is explicitly modelled by common and idiosyncratic risk factors. Since reinsurance is important for the capacity of insurers,...

A shared belief in the financial industry is that markets are driven by two types of regimes. Bull markets would be characterized by high returns and low volatility whereas bear markets would display low returns coupled with high volatility. Modeling the dynamics of different asset classes...

VaR_Delta-Normal fails in two counts: subadditivity and potentially producing losses larger than its portfolio value. This paper solves the second inconsistency developing formulas derived from a put option, named PVaR_Delta-Normal and Put_Expected_Shortfall, PSF_Delta-Normal; the latter also...

VaR_Delta-Normal is derived from a Put option, named PVaR_Delta-Normal and Expected_Shortfall, PSF_Delta-Normal – the latter a coherent measure – guaranteeing VaR can never be larger than the fund value. Current standard VaR_Delta-Normal uses covariances calculated from the entire...

In a lively roundtable debate, members of the Brandes Institute Advisory Board (BIAB) and guest speaker Brad Case discussed the pros and cons of private equity and whether the investment class is a viable alternative.While some Board members shared their successes, Case cited challenges in the...

InvestorLit is a subscription service providing reviews of institutional investment literature. The reviews cover a wide range of investment topics and are published on their website. Bruce Grantier, Founder of InvestorLit, is a member of the Brandes Institute Advisory Board. Members of the...

The losses from the 2011 earthquakes in Japan remained in Japan, while reinsurance spread the losses from that year's New Zealand earthquake to the rest of the world.This paper finds that the Japanese case is more typical: losses from natural disasters are shared internationally to a generally...

The endowment effect, status quo bias, and loss aversion are robust and well documented results from experimental psychology. They introduce a wedge between the prices at which one is willing to sell or buy a good. The objective of this paper is to address this wedge. We show that the presence...

We study the valuation of unit-linked life insurance contracts with surrender guarantees. Instead of solving an optimal stopping problem, we propose a more realistic approach accounting for policyholders’ rationality in exercising their surrender option. The valuation is conducted at the...