IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mcm/deptwp/2004-13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Disaster Insurance or a Disastrous Insturance - Natural Disaster Insurance in France

Author

Listed:
  • Mario Jametti
  • Thomas von Ungern-Sternberg

Abstract

We model natural disaster insurance in France. We explicitly take into account the main institutional features of the system, such as the uniform premium rate in both high and low risk regions and the existence of a state reinsurance company. Our model indicates that the institutional set-up is fundamentally flawed. We find that the market is likely to lead to “specialist” equilibria, where insurers specialize in serving either high or low risk regions. As a result the reinsurance company, which offers cover to all insurers at the same price, is likely to suffer from a portfolio with mainly “bad” risks. We show that increasing the premium rate customers have to pay, a policy undertaken by the French authorities, will not necessarily solve these problems and comes at a high cost to the final consumer (and taxpayer).

Suggested Citation

  • Mario Jametti & Thomas von Ungern-Sternberg, 2004. "Disaster Insurance or a Disastrous Insturance - Natural Disaster Insurance in France," Department of Economics Working Papers 2004-13, McMaster University.
    • Handle: RePEc:mcm:deptwp:2004-13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/rsrch/papers/archive/2004-13-ModFR408.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mario Jametti & Thomas von Ungern-Sternberg, 2006. "Risk Selection in Natural Disaster Insurance – the Case of France," CESifo Working Paper Series 1683, CESifo.
    2. Franco Mariuzzo & Patrick Paul Walsh & Ciara Whelan, 2004. "EU Merger Control in Differentiated Product Industries," CESifo Working Paper Series 1312, CESifo.
    3. Franz Sinabell & Thomas Url, 2006. "Versicherungen als effizientes Mittel zur Risikotragung von Naturgefahren," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 28181, February.
    4. Mario Jametti & Thomas von Ungern-Sternberg, 2010. "Risk Selection in Natural-Disaster Insurance," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 166(2), pages 344-364, June.
    5. Mario Jametti & Thomas von Ungern-Sternberg, 2010. "Risk Selection in Natural-Disaster Insurance," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 166(2), pages 344-364, June.

    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. P. Nowak, 1999. "Analysis of Applications of Some Ex-Ante Instruments for the Transfer of Catastrophic Risks," Working Papers ir99075, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
    2. Brown, Jeffrey R. & Cummins, J. David & Lewis, Christopher M. & Wei, Ran, 2004. "An empirical analysis of the economic impact of federal terrorism reinsurance," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(5), pages 861-898, July.
    3. 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.
    4. Mario Jametti & Thomas von Ungern-Sternberg, 2009. "Hurricane Insurance in Florida," Quaderni della facoltà di Scienze economiche dell'Università di Lugano 0905, USI Università della Svizzera italiana.
    5. Gibson, Rajna & Habib, Michel A. & Ziegler, Alexandre, 2014. "Reinsurance or securitization: The case of natural catastrophe risk," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 79-100.
    6. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    7. 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.
    8. Erwann Michel-Kerjan, 2013. "Finance des risques catastrophiques. Le marché américain est en plein bouleversement," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 64(4), pages 615-634.
    9. Mario Jametti & Thomas von Ungern-Sternberg, 2006. "Risk Selection in Natural Disaster Insurance – the Case of France," CESifo Working Paper Series 1683, CESifo.
    10. 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.
    11. Froot, Kenneth A. & O'Connell, Paul G.J., 2008. "On the pricing of intermediated risks: Theory and application to catastrophe reinsurance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 69-85, January.
    12. Enjolras, Geoffroy & Kast, Robert, 2007. "Using participating and financial contracts to insure catastrophe risk: Implications for crop risk management," 101st Seminar, July 5-6, 2007, Berlin Germany 9268, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    13. Tse-Ling Teh & Alan Martina, 2008. "Developing Countries Spreading Covariant Risk Into International Risk Markets: Subsidised Catastrophe Bonds Or Reinsurance, Or Disaster Assistance?," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2008-492, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    14. Charpentier, Arthur & Le Maux, Benoît, 2014. "Natural catastrophe insurance: How should the government intervene?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 1-17.
    15. M. Martin Boyer & Théodora Dupont-Courtade, 2013. "The Market for Reinsurance," CIRANO Working Papers 2013s-06, CIRANO.
    16. Viral V. Acharya & Lasse H. Pedersen & Thomas Philippon & Matthew Richardson, 2012. "How to Calculate Systemic Risk Surcharges," NBER Chapters, in: Quantifying Systemic Risk, pages 175-212, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Wang, Chen & Sun, Jiayi & Russell, Roddy & Daziano, Ricardo A., 2018. "Analyzing willingness to improve the resilience of New York City's transportation system," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 10-19.
    18. Brock, Philip L., 1998. "Financial safety nets and incentive structures in Latin America," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1993, The World Bank.
    19. Mingtao Ding & Fangqiang Wei & Kaiheng Hu, 2012. "Property insurance against debris-flow disasters based on risk assessment and the principal–agent theory," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 60(3), pages 801-817, February.
    20. Tito Cordella & Eduardo Levy Yeyati, 2015. "CATalytic insurance: the case of natural disasters," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 31(3-4), pages 330-349.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation

    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:mcm:deptwp:2004-13. 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/demcmca.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.