Severe natural catastrophes in the early nineties have brought about a lack of financial capacity in the catastrophe line of the global reinsurance market. The finance industry reacted to this situation by issuing innovative products designed to spread the excess risk more widely among...

This paper presents an experimental investigation of risk taking in the domain of losses. The experiments are conducted with students in several universities during introduction rudiments to expected utility theory and risk behaviour. The results are partly compatible with expected utility...

This paper adopts a normative approach to catastrophe insurance. It addresses the question of how innovations in the design of insurance contracts could help resolve the capacity gap in the provision of insurance against natural catastrophes. It extends previous research with the same approach...

The paper reviews the evolution in insurance economics over the past 25 years, by first recalling the situation in 1973, then presenting the developments and new approaches which flourished since then. The paper argues that these developments were only possible because steady advances were made...

In this paper, we investigate the optimal timing and location for deep geological disposal of nuclear waste. Our model is based on the real options approach to investment under uncertainty. In this context, the problem is similar to the optimal exercise policy for a perpetual American spread option.