In this report we discuss the factors driving the growth of the global financial sector that are considered by many authors (e.g. Toporowski,1999 and Orhangazi, 2008) to have precipitated the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Our analysis focuses on the behavior of the different types of financial...

This paper presents a model that measures the impact of political risk on portfolio investment when the political risks are multivariate and correlated across countries. The multivariate approach generalizes the single country model but retains most of its characteristics in terms of its ability...

“El sector asegurador es un importante generador de recursos de ahorro institucional que ha promovido el desarrollo del mercado de capitales alrededor del mundo y ha canalizado inversión hacia los sectores industrial, financiero y constructor principalmente. En Colombia hasta la década de...

In addition to premiums, investment income is one of the two main sources of capital for property-casualty (P/C) insurance companies. This study investigates short-term equity trading behavior of P/C insurers in the United States in 2007 and 2008, and finds that over 27 percent of non-group...

We address the paradox that financial innovations aimed at risk-sharing appear to have made the world riskier. Financial innovations facilitate hedging idiosyncratic risks among agents; however, aggregate risks can be hedged only with liquid assets. When risk-sharing is primitive, agents...

The current financial crisis had an important impact on economies all over the world. Romania – one of the Eastern European countries, considered just one year ago to have a good growth potential – is also absorbing the shock waves of this crisis. As expected, the first to respond to those...

Foreign exchange rates can be subject to considerable daily fluctuations (up to 5 percent within one day). This can, in certain cases, cause serious losses on open overnight positions. Given a maximum tolerable loss for a company, limits have to be set on open overnight positions in foreign...

In this paper, we first discuss the characteristics and major benefits of the Swissrisk-based capital standards for insurance companies (Swiss Solvency Test), introduced in 2006. As the insurance industry is one of the largest institutional investors in Switzerland, changes to its asset and...

The aim of this paper is to develop an alternative approach for assessing an insurer’s solvency as a proposal for a standard model for Solvency II. Instead ofderiving minimum capital requirements—as it is done in solvency regulation—our model provides company-specific minimum standards for...

Die Dynamische Finanzanalyse (DFA) hat sich in den vergangenen Jahren zu einemwichtigen Instrument zur Analyse der Finanzlage eines Versicherungsunternehmens entwickelt.Trotz der zunehmenden Verbreitung der DFA in der Praxis und zahlreicher Abhandlungenin der wissenschaftlichen Literatur gibt es...