This paper grew out of a lecture presented at the 54th Session of the International Statistical Institute in Berlin, August 13 - 20, 2003, Schneeweiss (2003). It intends not only to outline the eventful life of Abraham Wald (1902 - 1950) in Austria and in the United States but also to present...

Das vorliegende Papier präsentiert das Konzept der Verbriefung von Versicherungsrisiken (insurance-linked securities) anhand von Catastrophe Bonds. In einem ersten Teil wird das traditionelle Versicherungsgeschäft vorgestellt und auf dessen Hauptproblematiken eingegangen. In einem zweiten Teil...

When a share is lent, the lending institution often neglects to match the loan to a particular underlying share. The institution will then solicit the owner of the lent share for votes on corporate proposals, despite the owner's loss of voting rights. This “over-voting” introduces a...

China's development model challenges the approaches of traditional Western donors like the World Bank. We argue that both aim at stability, but differ in the norms propagated to achieve that. Using fixed effects and IV estimations, we analyze a broad range of subnational stability measures in...