Whether man-made or naturally occurring, large-scale disasters can cause fatalities and injuries, devastate property and communities, savage the environment, impose significant financial burdens on individuals and firms, and test political leadership. Moreover, global challenges such as climate change and terrorism reveal the interdependent and interconnected nature of our current moment: what occurs in one nation or geographical region is likely to have effects across the globe. Our information age creates new and more integrated forms of communication that incur risks that are difficult to evaluate, let alone anticipate. All of this makes clear that innovative approaches to assessing and managing risk are urgently required. When catastrophic risk management was in its inception thirty years ago, scientists and engineers would provide estimates of the probability of specific types of accidents and their potential consequences. Economists would then propose risk management policies based on those experts' estimates with little thought as to how this data would be used by interested parties. Today, however, the disciplines of finance, geography, history, insurance, marketing, political science, sociology, and the decision sciences combine scientific knowledge on risk assessment with a better appreciation for the importance of improving individual and collective decision-making processes. The essays in this volume highlight past research, recent discoveries, and open questions written by leading thinkers in risk management and behavioral sciences. The Future of Risk Management provides scholars, businesses, civil servants, and the concerned public tools for making more informed decisions and developing long-term strategies for reducing future losses from potentially catastrophic events. Contributors: Mona Ahmadiani, Joshua D. Baker, W. J. Wouter Botzen, Cary Coglianese, Gregory Colson, Jeffrey Czajkowski, Nate Dieckmann, Robin Dillon, Baruch Fischhoff, Jeffrey A. Friedman, Robin Gregory, Robert W. Klein, Carolyn Kousky, Howard Kunreuther, Craig E. Landry, Barbara Mellers, Robert J. Meyer, Erwann Michel-Kerjan, Robert Muir-Wood, Mark Pauly, Lisa Robinson, Adam Rose, Paul J. H. Schoemaker, Paul Slovic, Phil Tetlock, Daniel Vastfjall, W. Kip Viscusi, Elke U. Weber, Richard Zeckhauser.

A complete guide to the theory and practice of volatility models in financial engineering

Volatility has become a hot topic in this era of instant communications, spawning a great deal of research in empirical finance and time series econometrics. Providing an overview of the most recent advances, "Handbook of Volatility Models and Their Applications" explores key concepts and topics essential for modeling the volatility of financial time series, both univariate and multivariate, parametric and non-parametric, high-frequency and low-frequency.

Featuring contributions from international experts in the field, the book features numerous examples and applications from real-world projects and cutting-edge research, showing step by step how to use various methods accurately and efficiently when assessing volatility rates. Following a comprehensive introduction to the topic, readers are provided with three distinct sections that unify the statistical and practical aspects of volatility:

Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity and Stochastic Volatility presents ARCH and stochastic volatility models, with a focus on recent research topics including mean, volatility, and skewness spillovers in equity markets

Other Models and Methods presents alternative approaches, such as multiplicative error models, nonparametric and semi-parametric models, and copula-based models of (co)volatilities

Realized Volatility explores issues of the measurement of volatility by realized variances and covariances, guiding readers on how to successfully model and forecast these measures

"Handbook of Volatility Models and Their Applications" is an essential reference for academics and practitioners in finance, business, and econometrics who work with volatility models in their everyday work. The book also serves as a supplement for courses on risk management and volatility at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels.

In 1950, the Governor of Tennessee called for an investigation of the Tennessee Children's Home black market baby operations, said to have grossed $1 million for Georgia Tann, the superintendent of the local branch of the home. Tann was accused of fraudulently persuading pregnant mothers to relinquish their children. A number of Hollywood celebrities adopted children through the home, namely Joan Crawford, June Allyson, and Dick Powell. During the investigation, local attorneys and justices were found to be part of the scandalous network of adoption that allowed adoptive parents to be out-of-state residents. The story is dramatic and shows southern politics at its worst--congenial, respected public figures running shady deals in the back room. Thousands of children were placed in adopted homes during the agency's operation. Each case is a fascinating story involving the search and reunion of adopted children with their natural families.

With the Solvency II deadline approaching, and full implementation expected from January 2016, affected entities are at varying states of readiness with embedding Solvency II into everyday practices becoming a major focus. Programme stakeholder communications needs to be robust to secure compliance and buy-in on both internal and external fronts. If your CEO fails to communicate to the markets your organization's ability to deliver on the EU Directive, or if a local Regulator finds that your Board has failed to embed a risk culture that is aligned with Solvency II, your ability to operate in the Solvency II world will be questioned. Solvency II: Stakeholder Communications and Change explains how to negate such risks. Gabrielle O'Donovan demonstrates how to approach stakeholder communications and change management in a structured and disciplined way, framed by the EU Directive's governance requirements. She demonstrates how to use a variety of tools and techniques to engage people with change and embed new ways of doing things. She reveals how to embed risk consciousness into your culture, helping you secure Solvency II approval and operate successfully in the Solvency II world. Based on the author's original research and the latest industry developments, Solvency II: Stakeholder Communications and Change is well-structured, readable and above all essential for all involved in Solvency II implementation.

Enables critical thinking about the current state of risk management and ERM Demonstrates contemporary shortcomings and challenges from real life cases Draws from a global selection of cases from well-known organisations Provides a basis for developing more effective risk management approaches

There are two questions often asked of risk communication: what has been learned from past work, and what is needed to push the field forward? Drawing on the experience of leading risk researchers and practitioners, Effective Risk Communication focuses on answering these questions. The book draws together new examples of research and practice from contexts as diverse as energy generation, human health, nuclear waste, climate change, food choice, and social media. This book treats risk communication as much more than the interchange of risk information between experts and non-experts; rather, it aims to emphasise the diversity in viewpoints and practices. In each specially commissioned chapter, the authors reflect on the theoretical and applied underpinnings of their best projects and comment on how their approach could be used effectively by others. Building upon each other, the chapters will provoke new discussion and action around a discipline which many feel is neither meeting important needs in practice, nor living up to its potential in research. Through a more careful examination of the work already done in risk communication, the book will help develop better, more reflective practice for the future.

By the eve of the Great Depression, there existed in America the equivalent of a policy for every man, woman and child, and in Britain it grew from its narrow aristocratic base to cover all social classes. This primary resource collection is the first comparative history of British and American life insurance industries.

By the eve of the Great Depression, there existed in America the equivalent of a policy for every man, woman and child, and in Britain it grew from its narrow aristocratic base to cover all social classes. This primary resource collection is the first comparative history of British and American life insurance industries.

An incisive framework for companies seeking to increase their resilience In The Black Swan Problem: Risk Management Strategies for a World of Wild Uncertainty, renowned risk and finance expert Hakan Jankensgard delivers an extraordinary and startling discussion of how firms should navigate a world of uncertainty and unexpected events. It examines three fundamental, high-level strategies for creating resilience in the face of "black swan" risks, highly unlikely but devastating events: insurance, buffering, and flexibility: The author also presents: Detailed case studies, stories, and examples of major firms that failed to anticipate Black Swan Problems and, as a result, were either wiped out or experienced a major strategy disruption Extending the usual academic focus on individual biases to analyze Swans from an organizational perspective and prime organizations to proactive rather than reactive action Practical applications and tactics to mitigate Black Swan risks and protect corporate strategies against catastrophic losses and the collateral damage that they cause Strategies and tools for turning Black Swan events into opportunities, reflecting the fact that resilience can be used for strategic advantage An expert blueprint for companies seeking to anticipate, mitigate, and process tail risks, The Black Swan Problem is a must-read for students and practitioners of risk management, executives, founders, managers, and other business leaders.

First published in 1986, Insurance for Unemployment proposes a radical approach to the reform of unemployment and social insurance. The book develops the ethical, economic and actuarial case for the proposed reforms, whereby the individual pays the contributions which reflect the unemployment risk that he wishes to insure. Such ideas provide a libertarian alternative to the social security systems that have been adopted by most countries in the world based on Beveridge's conception of social insurance, and the book provides an original basis for privatising unemployment insurance. Conventional acceptance of the welfare state is challenged, while the book stands as a landmark in relating market principles to issues of social policy.

This timely research review successfully combines economically-oriented legal scholarship on insurance with policy-relevant economics scholarship on insurance. Professor Schwarcz has selected seminal contributions from the past twenty years to explore some of the central questions involving the role of the state in insurance markets. These include rules governing the interpretation and enforceability of insurance contracts, the regulation of insurers and insurance markets, and the role of public programs in supporting private insurance markets. This essential title will be of immense value and interest to students and academics interested in the diverse field of the law and economics of insurance.

Insurance is an important - if still poorly understood - mechanism for dealing with a broad variety of risks associated with modern life. This book conducts an in-depth examination of one of the largest and longest-established private insurance industries in Europe: British life insurance. In doing so, it draws on over 40 oral history interviews to trace how the sector is changed since the 1970s, a period characterised by rampant financialisation and neoliberalisation. Combining insights from science and technology studies and economic sociology, this is an unprecedented study of the evolution of insurance practices and an invaluable contribution to our understanding of financial capitalism.

First published in 1986, Insurance for Unemployment proposes a radical approach to the reform of unemployment and social insurance. The book develops the ethical, economic and actuarial case for the proposed reforms, whereby the individual pays the contributions which reflect the unemployment risk that he wishes to insure. Such ideas provide a libertarian alternative to the social security systems that have been adopted by most countries in the world based on Beveridge 's conception of social insurance, and the book provides an original basis for privatising unemployment insurance. Conventional acceptance of the welfare state is challenged, while the book stands as a landmark in relating market principles to issues of social policy.

The quantitative modeling of complex systems of interacting risks is a fairly recent development in the financial and insurance industries. Over the past decades, there has been tremendous innovation and development in the actuarial field. In addition to undertaking mortality and longevity risks in traditional life and annuity products, insurers face unprecedented financial risks since the introduction of equity-linking insurance in 1960s. As the industry moves into the new territory of managing many intertwined financial and insurance risks, non-traditional problems and challenges arise, presenting great opportunities for technology development. Today's computational power and technology make it possible for the life insurance industry to develop highly sophisticated models, which were impossible just a decade ago. Nonetheless, as more industrial practices and regulations move towards dependence on stochastic models, the demand for computational power continues to grow. While the industry continues to rely heavily on hardware innovations, trying to make brute force methods faster and more palatable, we are approaching a crossroads about how to proceed. An Introduction to Computational Risk Management of Equity-Linked Insurance provides a resource for students and entry-level professionals to understand the fundamentals of industrial modeling practice, but also to give a glimpse of software methodologies for modeling and computational efficiency. Features Provides a comprehensive and self-contained introduction to quantitative risk management of equity-linked insurance with exercises and programming samples Includes a collection of mathematical formulations of risk management problems presenting opportunities and challenges to applied mathematicians Summarizes state-of-arts computational techniques for risk management professionals Bridges the gap between the latest developments in finance and actuarial literature and the practice of risk management for investment-combined life insurance Gives a comprehensive review of both Monte Carlo simulation methods and non-simulation numerical methods Runhuan Feng is an Associate Professor of Mathematics and the Director of Actuarial Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst. He is a Helen Corley Petit Professorial Scholar and the State Farm Companies Foundation Scholar in Actuarial Science. Runhuan received a Ph.D. degree in Actuarial Science from the University of Waterloo, Canada. Prior to joining Illinois, he held a tenure-track position at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he was named a Research Fellow. Runhuan received numerous grants and research contracts from the Actuarial Foundation and the Society of Actuaries in the past. He has published a series of papers on top-tier actuarial and applied probability journals on stochastic analytic approaches in risk theory and quantitative risk management of equity-linked insurance. Over the recent years, he has dedicated his efforts to developing computational methods for managing market innovations in areas of investment combined insurance and retirement planning.

The flow of capital to Third World countries in recent years has been less than expected for realizing their growth objectives. As a consequence, efforts have been redoubled to attract capital in the form of direct investment. The World Bank has proposed the establishment of a multilateral guarantee scheme, encompassing as many investing and host countries as possible, to reduce the risks associated with overseas investment.The authors analyze and comment on the necessity and suitability of the World Bank proposal. They examine earlier proposals for setting up multi lateral guarantee schemes and the reasons for their failure, develop an eco nomic frame of reference for analyzing the new proposal, describe and examine the World Bank plan, and present alternatives to it. They pay particular attention to two major assumptions of the plan: that additional foreign investment capital for developing countries could be mobilized on a large scale if the investment risks were reduced, and that existing national insurance schemes display shortcomings that could be avoided in a multilateral system.

Despite their economic and social importance, there are relatively few book-length studies of national insurance industries. This collection of nine essays by a group of international experts redresses this balance; providing an extensive geographical and thematic spread, linked via an extensive introduction.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the theory, functioning, management and legal background of the insurance industry. Written in accessible, non-technical style, Insurance Theory and Practice begins with an examination of the insurance concept, its guiding principles and legal rules before moving on to an analysis of the market, its players and their roles and relationships. The model is the UK insurance market which is globally recognized and forms the basis of the insurance system in a range of countries in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean as well as Australia and Canada. The book covers the underlying ideas behind insurance transactions, together with the legal and financial principles that permit these concepts to function in the real world. Key issues considered include: the role of the constituent parts of the insurance market the operation of both life and general insurers with special reference to the operation of the Lloyd's market the nature and function of reinsurers, brokers and loss adjusters the influence of government, both in terms of market regulation and consumer protection alternatives to the established private sector insurers, such as government schemes, Islamic insurance and alternative risk financing.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the theory, functioning, management and legal background of the insurance industry. Written in accessible, non-technical style, Insurance Theory and Practice begins with an examination of the insurance concept, its guiding principles and legal rules before moving on to an analysis of the market, its players and their roles and relationships. The model is the UK insurance market which is globally recognized and forms the basis of the insurance system in a range of countries in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean as well as Australia and Canada. The book covers the underlying ideas behind insurance transactions, together with the legal and financial principles that permit these concepts to function in the real world. Key issues considered include: the role of the constituent parts of the insurance market the operation of both life and general insurers with special reference to the operation of the Lloyd's market the nature and function of reinsurers, brokers and loss adjusters the influence of government, both in terms of market regulation and consumer protection alternatives to the established private sector insurers, such as government schemes, Islamic insurance and alternative risk financing.

The purpose of the book is to provide insurance practitioners, consumers, and students with definitions of common insurance terms in both the property/casualty and life/health insurance industries. The unique feature of the book is that many of the definitions contain detailed explanations of coverage provided by certain types of insurance and/or examples that illustrate how a particular coverage works. The book should be helpful to insurance agents and to new insurance agency/company personnel. It will also be helpful to consumers to use as a reference guide to better understand insurance products the consumer needs. Finally, it will be useful as a reference guide for students in business courses.

Investments, global warming and crossing the road a " risk is a factor embedded in our everyday lives but do we really understand what it means, how it is quantified and how decisions are made? In six chapters Ben Ale explains the concepts, methods and procedures for risk analysis and in doing so provides an introductory understanding of risk perception, assessment and management.

Aided by over seventy illustrations, the author casts light on the often overlooked basics of this fascinating field, making this an essential text for students at undergraduate and postgraduate level as well as policy and decision-making professionals.

Developed from the Safety Science or Risk Science course taught at Delft University, this highly respected author has a lifetime of knowledge and experience in the study of risk.

As health care concerns grow in the U.S., medical anthropologist Linda M. Whiteford and social psychologist Larry G. Branch present their findings on a health care anomaly, from an unlikely source. Primary Health Care in Cuba examines the highly successful model of primary health care in Cuba following the 1959 Cuban Revolution. This model, developed during a time of dramatic social and political change, created a preventive care system to better provide equity access to health care. Cuba's recognition as a paragon of health care has earned praise from the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the Pan American Health Organization. In this book, Whiteford and Branch explore the successes of Cuba's preventive primary health care system and its contribution to global health.

From the mid-1970s until the crisis in 2007, the world of finance enjoyed thirty euphoric years as the general public, businesses and governments put their blind trust in financial techniques, professions and institutions. Shaken up by a structural crisis and a crisis of legitimacy, today's financial sector can no longer afford to avoid the issues summed up by the key question: what is next for the role of ethics and responsibility in finance? Many see an unbridgeable gap between ethics and responsibility and financial practice. Ethics and Responsibility in Finance paves the way for the dialogue that is needed in order to solve the current problems and allow the return of a refined ethical thinking in the financial sector. This book opens with an in-depth analysis of the operational implications of two key notions: ethics and responsibility. It then addresses ethical dilemmas that are characteristic to each of the three actors involved in any financial transaction. This begins with the discussion of the dilemmas of the ultimate owner of funds: the individual or collective saver, as in the case of pension funds. The analysis then turns to financial intermediaries such as banks, insurance companies, asset managers, and consultants, who work in a web of different loyalties. Finally, the dilemmas of the user of funds are addressed - the household taking a mortgage, an enterprise or a public authority which borrows - all of which have to be clear on the reasons and values driving their decisions. This volume is of great interest to those who study banking, corporate finance and ethics philosophy.

Few people realize that one of the nation's largest health programs runs through the tax system. Reformers of all stripes propose to modify current tax rules as part of larger programs to increase coverage and control costs. Is the current system working? Will tax-based reforms achieve their goals? Several of the nation's foremost experts on taxation and health policy address these questions in Using Taxes to Reform Health Insurance, a joint product of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and the American Tax Policy Institute. Led by respected economists Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution and Leonard Burman of the Urban Institute, contributors examine the role taxes currently play, the likely effects of recently introduced health savings accounts, the challenges of administering major subsidies for health insurance through the tax system, and options for using the tax system to expand health insurance coverage. No taxpayer or consumer of health care services can afford to ignore these issues.

As health care concerns grow in the U.S., medical anthropologist Linda M. Whiteford and social psychologist Larry G. Branch present their findings on a health care anomaly, from an unlikely source. Primary Health Care in Cuba examines the highly successful model of primary health care in Cuba following the 1959 Cuban Revolution. This model, developed during a time of dramatic social and political change, created a preventive care system to better provide equity access to health care. Cuba's recognition as a paragon of health care has earned praise from the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the Pan American Health Organization. In this book, Whiteford and Branch explore the successes of Cuba's preventive primary health care system and its contribution to global health.

This book provides one of the first systematic in-depth studies on regional catastrophe risk pools. It explores the various goals of these new financial instruments, illustrating how they function on a conceptual, technical and practical level, and reconstructs their political genesis. With climate-related disasters increasing in frequency and severity, Insuring Against Climate Change explores how affected countries, especially those in the Global South, have increasingly turned to innovative index insurance instruments, as demonstrated by the creation of the Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), the African Risk Capacity (ARC) and the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative Facility (PCRAFI Facility). Scherer scrutinizes the formation of this trend, exploring comparatively the goals, characteristics and histories of these tools, and argues that their attractiveness rests more on political than economic benefits and is, in fact, more supply than demand-driven. Making a significant contribution to current debates on the opportunities and limitations of what are sometimes described as indirect 'climate risk insurance', this book will be of great interest to political scientists with an interest in insurance instruments and climate-related disaster management politics as well as to practitioners working in the insurance, finance and the development sectors.