Natural catastrophes attract regularly the attention of media and have become a source of public concern. From a financial viewpoint, natural catastrophes represent idiosyncratic risks, diversifiable at the world level. But for reasons analyzed in this paper reinsurance markets are unable to...

Large systematic risks, such as those arising from natural catastrophes, climatic changes and uncertain trends in longevity increases, have risen in prominence at a societal level and, more particularly, have become a highly relevant issue for the insurance industry. Against this background, the...

Since the mid-1990s, many OECD countries have experienced a substantial increase in household indebtedness. Sweden, in particular, has seen indebtedness rise from 90% of disposable income in 1995 to 172% in 2014. The Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) has identified mortgage...

We propose a new welfare criterion that allows us to rank alternative financial market structures in the presence of belief heterogeneity. We analyze economies with complete and incomplete financial markets and/or restricted trading possibilities in the form of borrowing limits or transaction...

This paper explores the interaction between a credit crunch and the maturity of government debt, focusing on its impacts on an economy with heterogeneous households. We find that an increase in debt maturity helps softening the economic slump that follows a credit crisis. We show that,...