In this paper we discuss the importance of liquidity risk when evaluating the risk of portfolios of financial assets that insurance companies hold. Until very recently and within the scope of Solvency II, liquidity risk was only considered under Pillar II, i.e. the proposal was that insurance...

We study the role of insurance companies in propagating liquidity shocks to the real economy. We use natural disasters as our instrument to identify exogenous shifts in capital market liquidity, and study whether capital market liquidity affects regional-level fiscal conditions and drives GDP...

Based on a TRACE dataset of 9393 cat bond trades on the secondary OTC market from 2015 to 2019, we analyze trading patterns, liquidity determinants, and the liquidity premium of catastrophe bonds. We find that cat bonds are mostly traded without inventory involvement of dealers, and they are...

Life insurers massively sell savings contracts with surrender options which allow policyholders to withdraw a guaranteed amount before maturity. These options move toward the money when interest rates rise. Using data on German life insurers, we estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in...

We analyze the relationship between insurers' liquidity creation and reinsurance demand. Early theoretical contributions on liquidity creation propose that financial institutions enhance economic growth by creating liquidity in the economy. Liquidity creation means financing relatively illiquid...

This paper analyzes the relation between insurers' liquidity creation and reinsurance demand. The empirical measure of liquidity creation was developed for banks by Berger and Bouwman (2009), who distinguished two important bank activities: liquidity creation and risk transformation. Insurers...

Life insurers sell savings contracts with surrender options, allowing policyholders to prematurely withdraw guaranteed surrender values. Surrender options move toward the money when interest rates rise. Hence, higher interest rates raise surrender rates, as we document for the German life...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the influence of financial system liquidity and corporate leverage on a firm's overinvestment. We posit that when external funds are easily available, as in expansionary monetary periods, debt loses its traditional role as a managerial control mechanism....

This paper investigates whether firm managers time debt issuances according to market liquidity conditions. Using transactions data in the U.S. market from July 2002 to December 2009, our results show that both the moment and volume of debt issuance are significantly associated with periods of...