While insurers manage underwriting risk with various methods including reinsurance, insurers increasingly manage asset risk with options, futures, and other derivatives. Previous research shows that buyers of portfolio insurance pay considerably for downside protection. We add to this literature...

Hedging market downturns without sacrificing upside has long been sought by investors. If VIX was directly investable, adding it as a hedge to the S&P 500 would result in significantly improved performance over the equity only portfolio. However, tradable VIX products do not provide the hedge or...

We study optimal insurance, consumption and portfolio choice in a framework where a family purchases life insurance to protect the loss of the wage earner's human capital. Explicit solutions are obtained by employing CARA utility functions. We show that the optimal life insurance purchase is not...