A simulation investigation of the effect of default insurance on the optimal equity allocation and deficit spread period of a model defined benefit pension scheme is performed, using the old and new frameworks of the Pension Protection Fund in the U.K. as a starting point. The old default...

We show that by modeling the time series of mortality rate changes rather than mortality rate levels we can better model human mortality. Leveraging on this, we propose a model that expresses log mortality rate changes as an age group dependent linear transformation of a mortality index. The...

This study investigates whether the capital market values the efficiency of firms. After tracing stock returns and efficiency changes of 399 listed insurance firms in 52 countries during the 2002-2008 period, the paper reports a positive and statistically significant relationship between profit...

The modeling of wind speed is a traditional topic in meteorological researches where the main interest is on the short term forecast of wind speed intensity and direction. More recently this theme has received some interest in the quantitative finance literature for its relations with the...

The aim of this paper is to operationalize claims reserving based on general insurance individual claims data. We design a modeling architecture that is based on six different neural networks. Each network is a separate module that serves a certain modeling purpose. We apply our architecture to...

We test for the occurrence of extreme-value dependence between equity returns of European insurance companies. The results show that this form of dependence is evident among insurance companies, in particular among the larger composite insurers. Looking at which factors drive the occurrence of...

We analyze Berkshire Hathaway's equity portfolio over the 1976 to 2006 period and explore potential explanations for its superior performance. Contrary to popular belief, we find Berkshire Hathaway invests primarily in large-cap growth rather than quot;valuequot; stocks. Over the period the...

The main objective of this paper is to survey and evaluate the performance of the most popular univariate VaR methodologies, paying particular attention to their underlying assumptions and to their logical flaws. In the process, we show that the Historical Simulation method and its variants can...

Parameter shrinkage is known to reduce fitting and prediction errors in linear models. When the variables are dummies for age, period, etc. shrinkage is more commonly applied to differences between adjacent parameters, perhaps by fitting cubic splines or piecewise-linear curves (linear splines)...

We analyze the impact of the real-estate/mortgage crisis on the dependence between the market for common stocks and returns on Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT's), using a flexible mixed-copula approach. We find that the impact of the crisis on the levels of the tail dependence is very...