This paper examines the history of St. Louis, Missouri in coping with flood risk over the past 15 years, with a focus on flood insurance. Six challenges to the continued management of riverine flood risk are identified and discussed. They are (1) many property owners don’t buy flood insurance,...

The United States and other nations are facing large-scale risks at an accelerating pace. In 2005, three major hurricanes--Katrina, Rita, and Wilma--made landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast within an eight-week period. The damage caused by these storms led to insurance reimbursements and federal...

This paper tests some existing theories developed over the past 25 years on corporate demand for insurance. Using a unique dataset of 1,809 large U.S. corporations it provides the first empirical analysis that compares corporate demand for standard property insurance and for catastrophe coverage...

The United States and other nations are facing large-scale risks at an accelerating pace. In 2005, three major hurricanes—Katrina, Rita, and Wilma—made landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast within an eight-week period. The damage caused by these storms led to insurance reimbursements and...

We propose a constructed-choice model for general decision making. The model departs from utility theory and prospect theory in its treatment of multiple goals and it suggests several different ways in which context can affect choice. It is particularly instructive to apply this model to...

This paper focuses on the interaction between uncertainty and insurability in the context of some of the risks associated with climate change. It discusses the evolution of insured losses due to weather-related disasters over the past decade, and the key drivers of the sharp increases in both...