IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6011.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On The Pricing of Intermediated Risks: Theory and Application to Catastrophe Reinsurance

Author

Listed:
  • Kenneth A. Froot
  • Paul G. J. O'Connell

Abstract

We model the equilibrium price and quantity of risk transfer between firms and financial intermediaries. Value-maximizing firms have downward sloping demands to cede risk, while intermediaries, who assume risk, provide less-than-fully-elastic supply. We show that equilibrium required returns will be high' in the presence of financing imperfections that make intermediary capital costly. Moreover, financing imperfections can give rise to intermediary market power, so that small changes in financial imperfections can give rise to large changes in price. We develop tests of this alternative against the null that the supply of intermediary capital is perfectly elastic. We take the US catastrophe reinsurance market as an example, using detailed data from Guy Carpenter & Co., covering a large fraction of the catastrophe risks exchanged during 1970-94. Our results suggest that the price of reinsurance generally exceeds fair' values, particularly in the aftermath of large events, that market power of reinsurers is not a complete explanation for such pricing, and that reinsurers' high costs of capital appear to play an important role.

Suggested Citation

  • Kenneth A. Froot & Paul G. J. O'Connell, 1997. "On The Pricing of Intermediated Risks: Theory and Application to Catastrophe Reinsurance," NBER Working Papers 6011, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6011
    Note: AP CF IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nber.org/papers/w6011.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stulz, René M., 1984. "Optimal Hedging Policies," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 127-140, June.
    2. Robert C. Merton, 1995. "A Functional Perspective of Financial Intermediation," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 24(2), Summer.
    3. Kenneth A. Froot, 1999. "The Financing of Catastrophe Risk," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number froo99-1.
    4. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    5. Froot, Kenneth A. (ed.), 1999. "The Financing of Catastrophe Risk," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226266237, September.
    6. Neil A. Doherty & Clifford W. Smith, 1993. "Corporate Insurance Strategy: The Case Of British Petroleum," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 6(3), pages 4-15, September.
    7. Froot, Kenneth A. & Stein, Jeremy C., 1998. "Risk management, capital budgeting, and capital structure policy for financial institutions: an integrated approach," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 55-82, January.
    8. Jeremy C. Stein, 1998. "An Adverse-Selection Model of Bank Asset and Liability Management with Implications for the Transmission of Monetary Policy," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(3), pages 466-486, Autumn.
    9. Townsend, Robert M., 1979. "Optimal contracts and competitive markets with costly state verification," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 265-293, October.
    10. Douglas Gale & Martin Hellwig, 1985. "Incentive-Compatible Debt Contracts: The One-Period Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(4), pages 647-663.
    11. David Cummins & Christopher Lewis & Richard Phillips, 1999. "Pricing Excess-of-Loss Reinsurance Contracts against Cat as trophic Loss," NBER Chapters, in: The Financing of Catastrophe Risk, pages 93-148, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Cummins, J. David & Danzon, Patricia M., 1997. "Price, Financial Quality, and Capital Flows in Insurance Markets," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 3-38, January.
    13. Dwight M. Jaffee & Thomas Russell, 1996. "Catastrophe Insurance, Capital Markets and Uninsurable Risks," Center for Financial Institutions Working Papers 96-12, Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions, University of Pennsylvania.
    14. Dong, Weimin & Shah, Haresh & Wong, Felix, 1996. "A Rational Approach to Pricing of Catastrophe Insurance," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 12(2-3), pages 201-218, May.
    15. Kenneth A. Froot, 1997. "The Limited Financing of Catastrophe Risk: An Overview," NBER Working Papers 6025, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kenneth A. Froot, 2007. "Risk Management, Capital Budgeting, and Capital Structure Policy for Insurers and Reinsurers," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 74(2), pages 273-299, June.
    2. Dionne, Georges & Harrington, Scott, 2017. "Insurance and Insurance Markets," Working Papers 17-2, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management.
    3. Torben Andersen, 2001. "Managing Economic Exposures of Natural Disasters: Exploring Alternative Financial Risk Management Opportunities and Instruments," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 8934, Inter-American Development Bank.
    4. Almeida, Heitor & Campello, Murillo & Weisbach, Michael S., 2011. "Corporate financial and investment policies when future financing is not frictionless," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 675-693, June.
    5. Froot, Kenneth A., 2001. "The market for catastrophe risk: a clinical examination," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2-3), pages 529-571, May.
    6. Zhixiong Zeng, 2013. "A theory of the non-neutrality of money with banking frictions and bank recapitalization," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 52(2), pages 729-754, March.
    7. Harrington, Scott E. & Niehaus, Greg, 2003. "Capital, corporate income taxes, and catastrophe insurance," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 365-389, October.
    8. Acharya, Viral V. & Lochstoer, Lars A. & Ramadorai, Tarun, 2013. "Limits to arbitrage and hedging: Evidence from commodity markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(2), pages 441-465.
    9. Díaz, Roger Aliaga & Olivero, María Pía, 2010. "On the firm-level implications of the Bank Lending Channel of monetary policy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 2038-2055, October.
    10. Prof. Dr. Walter Krämer & Sebastian Schich, "undated". "Large - scaledisasters and the insurance industry," Working Papers 4, Business and Social Statistics Department, Technische Universität Dortmund, revised Mar 2005.
    11. Cummins, J. David & Lalonde, David & Phillips, Richard D., 2004. "The basis risk of catastrophic-loss index securities," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 77-111, January.
    12. Nell, Martin & Richter, Andreas, 2002. "Improving risk allocation through cat bonds," Working Papers on Risk and Insurance 10, University of Hamburg, Institute for Risk and Insurance.
    13. Ishita Sen, 2023. "Regulatory Limits to Risk Management," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 36(6), pages 2175-2223.
    14. John Kiff & François-Louis Michaud & Janet Mitchell, 2003. "An Analytical Review of Credit Risk Transfer Instruments," Financial Stability Review, National Bank of Belgium, vol. 1(1), pages 125-150, June.
    15. Thomann, Christian & Schulenburg, J.-Matthias, 2006. "Supply and Demand for Terrorism Insurance: Lessons from Germany," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-340, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    16. Radoslav Raykov, 2015. "Catastrophe insurance equilibrium with correlated claims," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 78(1), pages 89-115, January.
    17. Thilo Pausch, 2005. "Credit Risk, Credit Rationing, and the Role of Banks: The Case of Risk Averse Lenders," Discussion Paper Series 271, Universitaet Augsburg, Institute for Economics.
    18. Froot, Kenneth A. & Stein, Jeremy C., 1998. "Risk management, capital budgeting, and capital structure policy for financial institutions: an integrated approach," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 55-82, January.
    19. Zanjani, George, 2002. "Pricing and capital allocation in catastrophe insurance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 283-305, August.
    20. J. David Cummins & Christopher M. Lewis, 2002. "Catastrophic Events, Parameter Uncertainty and the Breakdown of Implicit Long-term Contracting in the Insurance Market: The Case of Terrorism Insurance," Center for Financial Institutions Working Papers 02-40, Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions, University of Pennsylvania.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F - International Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6011. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.