Ruin models with investment income

This survey treats the problem of ruin in a risk model when assets earn investment income. In addition to a general presentation of the problem, topics covered are a presentation of the relevant integro-differential equations, exact and numerical solutions, asymptotic results, bounds on the ruin probability and also the possibility of minimizing the ruin probability by investment and possibly reinsurance control. The main emphasis is on continuous time models, but discrete time models are also covered. A fairly extensive list of references is provided, particularly of papers published after 1998. For more references to papers published before that, the reader can consult [47].Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/08-PS134 the Probability Surveys (http://www.i-journals.org/ps/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Lévy insurance risk process with Poissonian taxation

The idea of taxation in risk process was first introduced by Albrecher and Hipp (2007), who suggested that a certain proportion of the insurer's income is paid immediately as tax whenever the surplus process is at its running maximum. In this paper, a spectrally negative L'{e}vy insurance risk model under taxation is studied. Motivated by the concept of randomized observations proposed by Albrecher et al. (2011b), we assume that the insurer's surplus level is only observed at a sequence of Poisson arrival times, at which the event of ruin is checked and tax may be collected from the tax authority. In particular, if the observed (pre-tax) level exceeds the maximum of the previously observed (post-tax) values, then a fraction of the excess will be paid as tax. Analytic expressions for the Gerber-Shiu expected discounted penalty function (Gerber and Shiu (1998)) and the expected discounted tax payments until ruin are derived. The Cram'{e}r-Lundberg asymptotic formula is shown to hold true for the Gerber-Shiu function, and it differs from the case without tax by a multiplicative constant. Delayed start of tax payments will be discussed as well. We also take a look at the case where solvency is monitored continuously (while tax is still paid at Poissonian time points), as many of the above results can be derived in a similar manner. Some numerical examples will be given at the end.postprin

On the Dual Risk Models

Abstract This thesis focuses on developing and computing ruin-related quantities that are potentially measurements for the dual risk models which was proposed to describe the annuity-type businesses from the perspective of the collective risk theory in 1950’s. In recent years, the dual risk models are revisited by many researchers to quantify the risk of the similar businesses as the annuity-type businesses. The major extensions included in this thesis consist of two aspects: the first is to search for new ruin-related quantities that are potentially indices of the risk for well-established dual models; the other aspect is to generalize the settings of the dual models instead of the ruin quantities. There are four separate articles in this thesis, in which the first (Chapter 2) and the last (Chapter 5) belong to the first type of extensions while the others (Chapter 3 and Chapter 4) belong to the generalizations of the dual models. The first article (Chapter 2) studies the discounted moments of the surplus at the time of the last jump before ruin for the compound Poisson dual risk model. The idea comes from that the ruin of the compound Poisson dual models is caused by absence of positive jumps within a period with length being propotional to the surplus at the time of the last jump. As a quantity related to a non-stopping time, the explicit expression of the target quantity is obtained through integro-differential equations. The second article (Chapter 3) investigate the Sparre-Andersen dual risk models in which the epochs are independently, identically distributed generalized Erlang-n random variables. An important difference between this model and some other models such as the Erlang-n dual risk models is that the roots to the generalized Lundberg’s equation are not necessarily distinct. By taking the multiple roots into account, the explicit expressions of the Laplace transform of the time to ruin and expected discounted aggregate dividends under the threshold strategy and exponential distributed revenues are derived. The third article (Chapter 4) revisits the the dual Lévy risk model. The target ruin quantity is the expected discounted aggregate dividends paid up to ruin under the threshold dividend strategy. The explicit expression is obtained in terms of the q-scale functions through constructing a new dividend strategy having the target ruin quantity converging to that under the threshold strategy. Also, the optimality of the threshold strategy among all the absolutely continuous stategies when evaluating the target quantity as a value function is discussed. The fourth article (Chapter 5) initiate the study of the Parisian ruin problem for the general dual Lévy risk models. Unlike the regular ruin for the dual models, the deficit at Parisian ruin is not necessarily equal to zero. Hence we introduce the Gerber-Shiu expected discounted penalty function (EPDF) at the Parisian ruin and obtain an explicit expression for this function. Keywords: Sparre-Andersen dual models, expected discounted aggregate dividends, dual Levy risk models, Parisian ruin, Gerber-Shiu function ii

Gerber–Shiu function in a class of delayed and perturbed risk model with dependence

Abstract:This paper considers the risk model perturbed by a diffusion process with a time delay in the arrival of the first two claims and takes into account dependence between claim amounts and the claim inter-occurrence times. Assuming that the time arrival of the first claim follows a generalized mixed equilibrium distribution, we derive the integro-differential Equations of the Gerber–Shiu function and its defective renewal equations. For the situation where claim amounts follow exponential distribution, we provide an explicit expression of the Gerber–Shiu function. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the ruin probability

A Generalization of the Discounted Penalty Function in Ruin Theory

As ruin theory evolves in recent years, there has been a variety of quantities pertaining to an insurer's bankruptcy at the centre of focus in the literature. Despite the fact that these quantities are distinct from each other, it was brought to our attention that many solution methods apply to nearly all ruin-related quantities. Such a peculiar similarity among their solution methods inspired us to search for a general form that reconciles those seemingly different ruin-related quantities. The stochastic approach proposed in the thesis addresses such issues and contributes to the current literature in three major directions. (1) It provides a new function that unifies many existing ruin-related quantities and that produces more new quantities of potential use in both practice and academia. (2) It applies generally to a vast majority of risk processes and permits the consideration of combined effects of investment strategies, policy modifications, etc, which were either impossible or difficult tasks using traditional approaches. (3) It gives a shortcut to the derivation of intermediate solution equations. In addition to the efficiency, the new approach also leads to a standardized procedure to cope with various situations. The thesis covers a wide range of ruin-related and financial topics while developing the unifying stochastic approach. Not only does it attempt to provide insights into the unification of quantities in ruin theory, the thesis also seeks to extend its applications in other related areas

The finite/infinite horizon ruin problem with multi-threshold premiums: a Markov fluid queue approach

We present a new numerical method to obtain the finite- and infinite-horizon ruin probabilities for a general continuous-time risk problem. We assume the claim arrivals are modeled by the versatile Markovian arrival process, the claim sizes are PH-distributed, and the premium rate is allowed to depend on the instantaneous risk reserve in a piecewise-constant manner driven by a number of thresholds, i.e., multi-threshold premiums. We introduce a novel sample path technique by which the ruin problems are shown to reduce to the steady-state solution of a certain multi-regime Markov fluid queue. We propose to use the already existing numerically efficient and stable numerical algorithms for such Markov fluid queues. Numerical results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method regarding the computation of the finite- and infinite-horizon ruin probabilities for risk models including those with relatively large number of thresholds. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York

Analysis of some risk models involving dependence

The seminal paper by Gerber and Shiu (1998) gave a huge boost to the study of risk theory by not only unifying but also generalizing the treatment and the analysis of various risk-related quantities in one single mathematical function - the Gerber-Shiu expected discounted penalty function, or Gerber-Shiu function in short. The Gerber-Shiu function is known to possess many nice properties, at least in the case of the classical compound Poisson risk model. For example, upon the introduction of a dividend barrier strategy, it was shown by Lin et al. (2003) and Gerber et al. (2006) that the Gerber-Shiu function with a barrier can be expressed in terms of the Gerber-Shiu function without a barrier and the expected value of discounted dividend payments. This result is the so-called dividends-penalty identity, and it holds true when the surplus process belongs to a class of Markov processes which are skip-free upwards. However, one stringent assumption of the model considered by the above authors is that all the interclaim times and the claim sizes are independent, which is in general not true in reality. In this thesis, we propose to analyze the Gerber-Shiu functions under various dependent structures. The main focus of the thesis is the risk model where claims follow a Markovian arrival process (MAP) (see, e.g., Latouche and Ramaswami (1999) and Neuts (1979, 1989)) in which the interclaim times and the claim sizes form a chain of dependent variables. The first part of the thesis puts emphasis on certain dividend strategies. In Chapter 2, it is shown that a matrix form of the dividends-penalty identity holds true in a MAP risk model perturbed by diffusion with the use of integro-differential equations and their solutions. Chapter 3 considers the dual MAP risk model which is a reflection of the ordinary MAP model. A threshold dividend strategy is applied to the model and various risk-related quantities are studied. Our methodology is based on an existing connection between the MAP risk model and a fluid queue (see, e.g., Asmussen et al. (2002), Badescu et al. (2005), Ramaswami (2006) and references therein). The use of fluid flow techniques to analyze risk processes opens the door for further research as to what types of risk model with dependency structure can be studied via probabilistic arguments. In Chapter 4, we propose to analyze the Gerber-Shiu function and some discounted joint densities in a risk model where each pair of the interclaim time and the resulting claim size is assumed to follow a bivariate phase-type distribution, with the pairs assumed to be independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.). To this end, a novel fluid flow process is constructed to ease the analysis. In the classical Gerber-Shiu function introduced by Gerber and Shiu (1998), the random variables incorporated into the analysis include the time of ruin, the surplus prior to ruin and the deficit at ruin. The later part of this thesis focuses on generalizing the classical Gerber-Shiu function by incorporating more random variables into the so-called penalty function. These include the surplus level immediately after the second last claim before ruin, the minimum surplus level before ruin and the maximum surplus level before ruin. In Chapter 5, the focus will be on the study of the generalized Gerber-Shiu function involving the first two new random variables in the context of a semi-Markovian risk model (see, e.g., Albrecher and Boxma (2005) and Janssen and Reinhard (1985)). It is shown that the generalized Gerber-Shiu function satisfies a matrix defective renewal equation, and some discounted joint densities involving the new variables are derived. Chapter 6 revisits the MAP risk model in which the generalized Gerber-Shiu function involving the maximum surplus before ruin is examined. In this case, the Gerber-Shiu function no longer satisfies a defective renewal equation. Instead, the generalized Gerber-Shiu function can be expressed in terms of the classical Gerber-Shiu function and the Laplace transform of a first passage time that are both readily obtainable. In a MAP risk model, the interclaim time distribution must be phase-type distributed. This leads us to propose a generalization of the MAP risk model by allowing for the interclaim time to have an arbitrary distribution. This is the subject matter of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 is concerned with the generalized Sparre Andersen risk model with surplus-dependent premium rate, and some ordering properties of certain ruin-related quantities are studied. Chapter 9 ends the thesis by some concluding remarks and directions for future research

L1L^1 semigroup generation for Fokker-Planck operators associated with general L\'evy driven SDEs

We prove a new generation result in $L^1$ for a large class of non-local operators with non-degenerate local terms. This class contains the operators appearing in Fokker-Planck or Kolmogorov forward equations associated with L\'evy driven SDEs, i.e. the adjoint operators of the infinitesimal generators of these SDEs. As a byproduct, we also obtain a new elliptic regularity result of independent interest. The main novelty in this paper is that we can consider very general L\'evy operators, including state-space depending coefficients with linear growth and general L\'evy measures which can be singular and have fat tails

On the decomposition of the absolute ruin probability in a perturbed compound Poisson surplus process with debit interest

We consider a compound Poisson surplus process perturbed by diffusion with debit interest. When the surplus is below zero or the company is on deficit, the company is allowed to borrow money at a debit interest rate to continue its business as long as its debt is at a reasonable level. When the surplus of a company is below a certain critical level, the company is no longer profitable, we say that absolute ruin occurs at this situation. In this risk model, absolute ruin may be caused by a claim or by oscillation. Thus, the absolute ruin probability in the model is decomposed as the sum of two absolute ruin probabilities, where one is the probability that absolute ruin is caused by a claim and the other is the probability that absolute ruin is caused by oscillation. In this paper, we first give the integro-differential equations satisfied by the absolute ruin probabilities and then derive the defective renewal equations for the absolute ruin probabilities. Using these defective renewal equations, we derive the asymptotical forms of the absolute ruin probabilities when the distributions of claim sizes are heavy-tailed and light-tailed. Finally, we derive explicit expressions for the absolute ruin probabilities when claim sizes are exponentially distributed. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.link_to_subscribed_fulltex