This paper examines how governance and risk management affect risk-taking in banks. It distinguishes between good risks, which are risks that have an ex ante private reward for the bank on a stand-alone basis, and bad risks, which do not have such a reward. A well-governed bank takes the amount...

This portfolio review, led by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery's (GFDRR) Disaster-FCV Nexus thematic area, aims to contribute to the GFDRR's overarching objective to help low- and middle-income countries understand and reduce their vulnerability to natural hazards and...

The objective of this report is to make recommendations for the Government of the Commonwealth of Dominica (GoCD) for the formulation of a country-specific comprehensive disaster risk financing (DRF) strategy, based on the assessment of the legislative, financial management, fiscal, and...

The objective of this feasibility study is to identify disaster risk finance and insurance (DRFI) solutions for up to 1.9 million family farmers in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. This study is motivated by an emerging consensus on the need to design and implement large-scale DRFI...

In the face of rising climate risk, financial institutions may adapt by transferring such risk to securitizers that have the skill and expertise to build diversified pools, such as Mortgage-Backed Securities. In diversified pools, exposure to climate risk may be a drop in the ocean of cash...

In the face of rising interest rates in 2022, banks mitigated interest rate exposure of the accounting value of their assets but left the vast majority of their long-duration assets exposed to interest rate risk. Data from call reports and SEC filings shows that only 6% of U.S. banking assets...

We study a firm that justifies its novel use of equity derivatives as a cash-flow hedging strategy. Our purpose is to understand the challenge of translating risk management theory into managerial action. Cephalon Inc., a biotech firm, bought a large block of call options on its own stock. If...

Typical value-at-risk (VAR) calculations involve the probabilities of extreme dollar losses, based on the statistical distributions of market prices. Such quantities do not account for the fact that the same dollar loss can have two very different economic valuations, depending on business...