In this paper we analyze and evaluate a standard approach financial institutions use to calculate their so-called total economic capital. If we consider a business that faces a total random loss S over a given one-year horizon then economic capital is traditionally defined as the difference...

We propose an optimization approach to allocating economic capital, distinguishing between an allocation or raising principle and a measure for the risk residual. The approach is applied both at the aggregate (conglomerate) level and at the individual (subsidiary) level and yields an integrated...

This article gives counterexamples for some conjecturesabout risk orders. One is that in risky situations, diversificationis always beneficial. A counterexample is providedby the Cauchy distribution, for which the sample means havethe same distribution as the sample elements, meaning that...