Named peril index insurance has great potential to address unmet risk management needs for agricultural insurance in developing economies, potentially contributing to increased agricultural sustainability and improved food security. However, the development and appraisal of index insurance business lines is not without challenges. Insurers must rigorously evaluate the quality of the products they offer and take care to ensure that distributors and policyholders understand the benefits and limits of the purchased coverage. Without these important steps to ensure responsible insurance practices, insurers can damage the implementation and potential of index insurance in the market. Risk Modeling for Appraising Named Peril Index Insurance Products: A Guide for Practitioners helps stakeholders in the named peril index insurance industry appraise new and existing products. Part 1 of the guide provides a summary of the insights and decisions required for the insurer to make an informed decision to launch and expand an index insurance business line. Insurance managers are the primary audience for part 1. Part 2 provides a step-by-step guide to calculating the decision metrics used by the insurance manager in part 1. These metrics are calculated using probabilistic modeling that provides insights into risks related to the index insurance product. Actuarial analysts are the primary audience for part 2. In an increasingly competitive insurance market, creative product development and imaginative business strategies are becoming the norm. This guide will help emerging market insurers who seek to stay on the cutting edge to successfully and sustainably penetrate new market segments.

Over the past two decades, the United States has successfully deregulated prices and restrictions on most previously-regulated industries, including airlines, trucking, railroads, telecommunications, and banking. Only a few industries remain regulated, the largest being the property-liability insurance business. In light of recent sweeping financial modernization legislation in other sectors of the insurance industry, this timely volume examines the basis for continued regulation of rates and forms of the U.S. property-liability insurance market. The book focuses on private passenger automobile insurance—the most important personal line of property-liability coverage, with annual premiums of about $120 billion. The authors analyze five state case studies: California, Massachusetts, and New Jersey—three of the most heavily regulated states—as well as Illinois, which has been deregulated for about 30 years, and South Carolina, which began to deregulate in 1997. The study also includes an econometric analysis based on all fifty states over a 25-year period that gauges the impact of regulation on insurance price levels, price volatility, and the proportion of automobiles insured in residual markets. The authors conclude that regulation does not significantly reduce long-run prices for consumers, and generally limits availability of coverage, reduces the quality and variety of services available in the market, inhibits productivity growth, and increases price volatility. Contributors include Dwight Jaffee (University of California, Berkeley), Thomas Russell (Santa Clara University ), Laureen Regan (Temple University), Sharon Tennyson (Cornell University), Mary Weiss (Temple University), John Worrall (Rutgers University), Stephen D'Arcy (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Martin Grace (Georgia State University), Robert Klein (Georgia State University), Richard Phillips (Georgia State University), Georges Dionne (University of Montreal), and Richard Butler (Brigham Young University).

This paper explores insurance as a source of financial system vulnerability. It provides a brief overview of the insurance industry and reviews the risks it faces, as well as several recent failures of insurance companies that had systemic implications. Assimilation of banking-type activities by life insurers appears to be the key systemic vulnerability. Building on this experience and the experience gained under the FSAP, the paper proposes key indicators that should be compiled and used for surveillance of financial soundness of insurance companies and the insurance sector as a whole.

The essential guide to quantifying risk vs. return has been updated to reveal the newest, most effective innovations in financial risk management Written for risk professionals and non-risk professionals alike, this easy-to-understand guide helps readers meet the increasingly insistent demand to make sophisticated assessments of their company’s risk exposure Provides the latest methods for measuring and transferring credit risk, increase risk-management transparency, and implement an organization-wide Enterprise risk Management (ERM) approach The authors are renowned figures in risk management: Crouhy heads research and development at NATIXIS; Galai is the Abe Gray Professor of Finance and Business Asdministration at Hebrew University; and Mark is the founding CEO of Black Diamond Risk

Leading the way in this field, the Encyclopedia of Quantitative Risk Analysis and Assessment is the first publication to offer a modern, comprehensive and in-depth resource to the huge variety of disciplines involved. A truly international work, its coverage ranges across risk issues pertinent to life scientists, engineers, policy makers, healthcare professionals, the finance industry, the military and practising statisticians. Drawing on the expertise of world-renowned authors and editors in this field this title provides up-to-date material on drug safety, investment theory, public policy applications, transportation safety, public perception of risk, epidemiological risk, national defence and security, critical infrastructure, and program management. This major publication is easily accessible for all those involved in the field of risk assessment and analysis. For ease-of-use it is available in print and online.

This volume of Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics focuses on latest results from entrepreneurship and SME research, Human Resources, along with a focus on the Tourism industry. The first part deals with topics ranging from entrepreneurial intentions, social entrepreneurship and technological entrepreneurship to EU policies such as the 7th Framework program. Bridging the themes, the second part on Human Resources and General Management deals with human capital issues, labor force education, employer branding and aligning HR practices to knowledge management outcomes. The third part in particular concentrates on the tourism industry in exploring innovative marketing strategies, WEB 2.0 Challenges, tourism product innovation, and success in international markets.

Operational Risk Control with Basel II, provides a sound methodology for operational risk control and focuses on management risk and ways to avoid it. The book explains why and how information technology is a major operational risk and shows how to integrate cost control in the operational risk perspective. It aslo details analytical approaches to operational risk control, to help with scorecard developments, explains the distinction between High Frequency Low Risk and Low Frequency High Risk events and provides many case studeies from banking and insurance to demonstrate the attention operational risks deserve. - Assists risk professionals in preparing their institution to comply with the New Capital Adequacy Framework issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which becomes mandatory from January 1, 2006 - Readers benefit from a significantly broader viewpoint on types of operational risks, operational risks controls, and results to be expected from operational risk management - compared to what the reader may gain from books previously published on this same topic

Economic and financial research on insurance markets has undergone dramatic growth since its infancy in the early 1960s. Our main objective in compiling this volume was to achieve a wider dissemination of key papers in this literature. Their significance is highlighted in the introduction, which surveys major areas in insurance economics. While it was not possible to provide comprehensive coverage of insurance economics in this book, these readings provide an essential foundation to those who desire to conduct research and teach in the field. In particular, we hope that this compilation and our introduction will be useful to graduate students and to researchers in economics, finance, and insurance. Our criteria for selecting articles included significance, representativeness, pedagogical value, and our desire to include theoretical and empirical work. While the focus of the applied papers is on property-liability insurance, they illustrate issues, concepts, and methods that are applicable in many areas of insurance. The S. S. Huebner Foundation for Insurance Education at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School made this book possible by financing publication costs. We are grateful for this assistance and to J. David Cummins, Executive Director of the Foundation, for his efforts and helpful advice on the contents. We also wish to thank all of the authors and editors who provided permission to reprint articles and our respective institutions for technical and financial support.