The Supply of Catastrophe Insurance Under Regulatory Constraints

Klein and Kleindorfer provide a brief overview of the current extent of their research on this topic. The intent of this research is to empirically address interactions across the multiple stakeholders in the Catastrophe Insurance Business, i.e. homeowners, businesses, insurers, reinsurers, the construction and real estate sector, and regulatory institutions. Their analysis is aimed at addressing three questions: What is the structure and performance of the catastrophe insurance market? How do factors such as, interdependencies, profits, risk exposures, and distribution impact the performance of the market? What is the impact of regulation of this market on pricing adequacy, pricing precision, and financial risk? What is the current state of the market, and what future sustainable states of the market are possible? This paper is primarily devoted to describing what authors consider to be the structural drivers of supply and demand and the impact of regulatory controls. These drivers are: "Demand structure" (i.e. why consumers buy what they do) obviously contains several components. Items such as location, demography, price, policy features such as the presence of absence of bundling, "quality" effects such as perceived solvency and claims processes, and finally, how products are distributed, all impact consumer choice. In addition, consumers have other risk management options open to them, the most obvious being where to live, what type of construction to choose and what type of "mitigation", if any to employ. "Supply Structure" describes how the consumer business of insurance is conducted. Salient features would be the degree of competition, geography, profitability, solvency, exposure, loss costs, marketing costs, organizational form, financial structure, and regulatory/solvency constraints. Obviously, insurance companies attempt to maximize profits in the face of these variables "Regulatory Impact" on such things as pricing adequacy, pricing precision, and financial risk has important effects on all parties. In particular the freedom to manage ones risk exposure is critical to everyone from the individual consumer to the largest company, and regulation may produce. In an analysis to come later, the researchers will utilize detailed premium record data obtained from ISO on insurance transactions, supplemented by information on expected costs for different policies and risk characteristics. The data will, for the first time, provide and empirically grounded understanding of the supply and demand for CAT-related coverage provided in residential insurance policies. The study will seek to identify the factors that most affect supply and demand and the magnitudes of their relative effects, including the pricing of CAT coverage and alternative policy provisions.

Distributed photovoltaic systems: Utility interface issues and their present status. Intermediate/three-phase systems

The interface issues between the intermediate-size Power Conditioning Subsystem (PCS) and the utility are considered. A literature review yielded facts about the status of identified issues

Development of an integrated configuration management/flight director system for piloted STOL approaches

A system analysis method for the development of an integrated configuration management/flight director system for IFR STOL approaches is presented. Curved descending decelerating approach trajectories are considered. Considerable emphasis is placed on satisfying the pilot centered requirements (acceptable workload) as well as the usual guidance and control requirements (acceptable performance). The Augmentor Wing Jet STOL Research Aircraft was utilized to allow illustration by example, and to validate the analysis procedure via manned simulation

The demand for homeowners insurance with bundled catastrophe coverages : Wharton project on managing catastrophic risks

In this paper, we estimate the demand for homeowner insurance in Florida. Since we are interested in a number of factors influencing demand, we approach the problem from two directions. We first estimate two hedonic equations representing the premium per contract and the price mark-up. We analyze how the contracts are bundled and how contract provisions, insurer characteristics and insured risk characteristics and demographics influence the premium per contract and the price mark-up. Second, we estimate the demand for homeowners insurance using two-stage least squares regression. We employ ISO's indicated loss costs as our proxy for real insurance services demanded. We assume that the demand for coverage is essentially a joint demand and thus we can estimate the demand for catastrophe coverage separately from the demand for noncatastrophe coverage. We determine that price elasticities are less elastic for catastrophic coverage than for non-catastrophic coverage. Further estimated income elasticities suggest that homeowners insurance is an inferior good. Finally, we conclude based on the results of a selection model that our sample of ISO reporting companies well represents the demand for insurance in the Florida market as a whole

Design of a flight director/configuration management system for piloted STOL approaches

The design and characteristics of a flight director for V/STOL aircraft are discussed. A configuration management system for piloted STOL approaches is described. The individual components of the overall system designed to reduce pilot workload to an acceptable level during curved, decelerating, and descending STOL approaches are defined. The application of the system to augmentor wing aircraft is analyzed. System performance checks and piloted evaluations were conducted on a flight simulator and the results are summarized

Stability of the proton-to-electron mass ratio

We report a limit on the fractional temporal variation of the proton-to-electron mass ratio as, obtained by comparing the frequency of a rovibrational transition in SF6 with the fundamental hyperfine transition in Cs. The SF6 transition was accessed using a CO2 laser to interrogate spatial 2-photon Ramsey fringes. The atomic transition was accessed using a primary standard controlled with a Cs fountain. This result is direct and model-free