Managing the Risk of Natural Catastrophes: The Role and Functioning of State Insurance Programs

This paper surveys state-mandated programs designed to provide natural catastrophe insurance to property owners and businesses unable to find a policy in the private market. The paper provides an overview of the 10 state programs offering wind or earthquake coverage and outlines the motivation for establishing such programs. The implications of design and operation decisions, such as pricing strategies and contract options, are discussed, as well as how these programs interact with the private property insurance market. Finally, the paper examines whether such programs can handle a truly catastrophic loss year and the merits and drawbacks of federal support for the programs.insurance, catastrophe, hurricane, earthquake, residual market mechanisms

Climate Change and Risk Management: Challenges for Insurance, Adaptation, and Loss Estimation

Adapting to climate change will not only require responding to the physical effects of global warming, but will also require adapting the way we conceptualize, measure, and manage risks. Climate change is creating new risks, altering the risks we already face, and also, importantly, impacting the interdependencies between these risks. In this paper we focus on three particular phenomena of climate related risks that will require a change in our thinking about risk management: global micro-correlations, fat tails, and tail dependence. Consideration of these phenomena will be particularly important for natural disaster insurance, as they call into question traditional methods of securitization and diversification.tail dependence, micro-correlations, fat tails, damage distributions, climate change

The Unholy Trinity: Fat Tails, Tail Dependence, and Micro-Correlations

Recent events in the financial and insurance markets, as well as the looming challenges of a globally changing climate point to the need to re-think the ways in which we measure and manage catastrophic and dependent risks. Management can only be as good as our measurement tools. To that end, this paper outlines detection, measurement, and analysis strategies for fat-tailed risks, tail dependent risks, and risks characterized by micro-correlations. A simple model of insurance demand and supply is used to illustrate the difficulties in insuring risks characterized by these phenomena. Policy implications are discussed.risk, fat tails, tail dependence, micro-correlations, insurance, natural disasters

Come Rain or Shine: Evidence on Flood Insurance Purchases in Florida

In the U.S., flood insurance is provided essentially through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), a public-private program established in 1968. In the past 10 years, the program has radically expanded to cover $1.1 trillion in assets today. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the largest flood insurance sample ever studied by focusing on the state of Florida, which accounts for 40 percent of the entire NFIP portfolio. We study the demand for flood insurance with a database of more than 7.5 million flood policies-in-force for the years 2000-2005, and all the claims filed in Florida during that period. We answer four questions: What are the characteristics of the buyers of flood insurance? What types of contracts (deductibles and coverage levels) are purchased? Where and when are claims paid and to what extent does mitigation work? How are prices determined and how much does NFIP insurance cost? Given the recent significant increase in the cost of catastrophes worldwide and the debate about the role that insurance can play to enhance adaptation to climate change, the responses to these questions shall be of interest to other countries too.Flood hazard - Insurance - NFIP - Florida - Catastrophe financing

Redistributional Effects of the National Flood Insurance Program

This study examines the redistributional effects of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) using a national database of premium, coverage, and claim payments at the county level between 1980 and 2006. Measuring progressivity as the departure from per capita county income proportionality we find that NFIP premiums are weakly regressive on an annual basis but become proportional as the time horizon is extended beyond a single year. In contrast, we find that NFIP claim payments are moderately progressive over all time horizons studied. In sum, we find no evidence that the NFIP disproportionally advantages richer counties.NFIP, progressivity, departure from proportionality

More Than a Wing and a Prayer: Government Indemnification of the Commercial Space Launch Industry

Using rockets to launch communications satellites and other spacecraft poses risks to the uninvolved public, including persons and property under the flight path of the launch vehicle. The federal government plays a pivotal technical role during the actual launch by carrying out certain risk-related procedures, thus causing third-party risk to be jointly produced by the company and the government. In addition, under the Commercial Space Launch Act, the government partially indemnifies commercial launch companies for third-party damages. We compare the indemnification policy to optimal liability rules under public-private co-production of risk. Under modest assumptions, shared liability created by the indemnification rules decreases the incentive of both parties to take care relative to the optimum. If care were observable, it would be preferable for the government to fully indemnify companies that take due care. The role of the government as an agent for third parties may qualify these findings.government indemnification, liability, insurance, space transportation

More Than a Wing and a Prayer: Government Indemnification of the Commercial Space Launch Industry

Using rockets to launch communications satellites and other spacecraft poses risks to the uninvolved public, including persons and property under the flight path of the launch vehicle. The federal government plays a pivotal technical role during the actual launch by carrying out certain risk-related procedures, thus causing third-party risk to be jointly produced by the company and the government. In addition, under the Commercial Space Launch Act, the government partially indemnifies commercial launch companies for third-party damages. We compare the indemnification policy to optimal liability rules under public-private co-production of risk. Under modest assumptions, shared liability created by the indemnification rules decreases the incentive of both parties to take care relative to the optimum. If care were observable, it would be preferable for the government to fully indemnify companies that take due care. The role of the government as an agent for third parties may qualify these findings.government indemnification, liability, insurance, space transportation

Private Investment and Government Protection

Hurricane Katrina did massive damage because New Orleans and the Gulf Coast were not appropriately protected. Wherever natural disasters threaten, the government -- in its traditional role as public goods provider -- must decide what level of protection to provide to an area. It does so by purchasing protective capital, such as levees for a low-lying city. We show that if private capital is more likely to locate in better-protected areas, then the marginal social value of protection will increase with the level of protection provided. That is, the benefit function is convex, contrary to the normal assumption of concavity. When the government protects and the private sector invests, due to the ill-behaved nature of the benefit function, there may be multiple Nash equilibria. Policy makers must compare them, rather than merely follow local optimality conditions, to find the equilibrium offering the highest social welfare. There is usually considerable uncertainty about the amount of investment that will accompany any level of protection, further complicating the government%u2019s choice problem. We show that when deciding on the current level of protection, the government must take account of the option value of increasing the level of protection in the future.

Responding to Threats of Climate Change Mega-Catastrophes

There is a low but uncertain probability that climate change could trigger "mega-catastrophes," severe and at least partly irreversible adverse effects across broad regions. This paper first discusses the state of current knowledge and the defining characteristics of potential climate change mega-catastrophes. While some of these characteristics present difficulties for using standard rational choice methods to evaluate response options, there is still a need to balance the benefits and costs of different possible responses with appropriate attention to the uncertainties. To that end, we present a qualitative analysis of three options for mitigating the risk of climate mega-catastrophes--drastic abatement of greenhouse gas emissions, development and implementation of geoengineering, and large-scale ex ante adaptation--against the criteria of efficacy, cost, robustness, and flexibility. We discuss the composition of a sound portfolio of initial investments in reducing the risk of climate change mega-catastrophes.

Responding to Threats of Climate Change Mega-Catastrophes

There is a low but uncertain probability that climate change could trigger “mega-catastrophes,” severe and at least partly irreversible adverse effects across broad regions. This paper first discusses the state of current knowledge and the defining characteristics of potential climate change mega-catastrophes. While some of these characteristics present difficulties for using standard rational choice methods to evaluate response options, there is still a need to balance the benefits and costs of different possible responses with appropriate attention to the uncertainties. To that end, we present a qualitative analysis of three options for mitigating the risk of climate mega-catastrophes—drastic abatement of greenhouse gas missions, development and implementation of geoengineering, and large-scale ex ante adaptation— against the criteria of efficacy, cost, robustness, and flexibility. We discuss the composition of a sound portfolio of initial investments in reducing the risk of climate change mega-catastrophes.climate change, catastrophe, risk, decisionmaking under uncertainty