Many institutional investors depend on the returns they generate to fund their operations and liabilities. How do these investors' financial conditions affect the management of their portfolios? We address this issue using the insurance industry because insurers are large investors for which...

The frequency with which firms adjust output prices helps explain persistent differences in capital structure across firms. Unconditionally, the most exible-price firms have a 19% higher long-term leverage ratio than the most sticky-price firms, controlling for known determinants of capital...

This paper analyzes the evolution of the main theories regarding the capital structure and the related impact on risk and corporate performance. The capital structure is a dynamic process that changes over time, depending on the variables that influence the overall evolution of the economy, a...

Mutual insurance companies and stock insurance companies are different forms of organized risk sharing: policyholders and owners are two distinct groups in a stock insurer, while they are one and the same in a mutual. This distinction is relevant to raising capital, selling policies, and sharing...

Risk transfer between primary insurance and reinsurance companies today takes place against a backdrop of major changes in international insurance and financial markets. One of these changes is the trend for the two markets to converge. This trend manifests itself in a growing number of product...

In 2003, Swiss Re introduced a mortality-based security designed to hedge excessive mortality changes for its life book of business. The concern was apparently brevity risk, i.e., the risk of premature death. The brevity risk due to a pandemic is similar to the property risk associated with...

Cummins et al. (1994) provide a conceptual framework for policymakers to use in analyzing risk-based capital systems. Based on their framework, this article provides an overview and critical analysis of risk-based capital requirements, with a focus on property/casualty insurance, as implemented...

In this paper, we first discuss the characteristics and major benefits of the Swissrisk-based capital standards for insurance companies (Swiss Solvency Test), introduced in 2006. As the insurance industry is one of the largest institutional investors in Switzerland, changes to its asset and...

In our article we consider insurance as a means of allocating terrorism risk. Terrorism poses asignificant challenge for insurers worldwide. In terms of possible losses it fits into the samecategory as earthquakes and hurricanes. Yet as a result of the uncertainty surrounding theserisks private...

Much attention has been paid to the large decreases in value of non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) during the financial crisis. Many observers have argued that the fall in prices was partly driven by decreased liquidity and fire sales. We investigate whether capital...