It has been said that insurance is the last of the financial services to accept radical change (Denney [1995-1996]). Yet there has been a fundamental shift in the geographic location and in the organization of the reinsurance industry in the last six years (Chichilnisky [19966]). Global environmental risks are partly responsible for this change; increased weather volatility and catastrophic risks are difficult to diversify using traditional insurance practices. To provide a map to the future, we need a realistic appraisal of how we got where we are. This is the story of how humans have hedged risks. There are two basic and distinct approaches: statistical and economic. The former is typical of the insurance industry; the latter typifies the securities industry. Both are needed to manage today's catastrophic risks. Neither alone will do. We show how a combination of both leads to efficient outcomes, and is the way to the future (Chichilnisky [1996a, 1996b, 1996d]).
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
8820.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies Q51 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Valuation of Environmental Effects
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: