To increase efforts to dealt with catastrophic risks, shift responsibility from individuals to firms: Corporate demand for catastrophe coverage is actually more price inelastic than the demand for non-catastrophe coverage. … A 10% increase in price will reduce quantity of terrorism coverage by only 2.42% whereas it will reduce the quantity of property coverage by 2.91%. This result is in contrast to the findings with respect to individual insurance choices in laboratory experiments and empirical studies on homeowners insurance. …
If a person is reasonably wealthy, it is generally the cases that ONLY catastrophe insurance is a good purchase, in the sense that on the aggragate, the insurance buyer loses in terms of expected value (otherwise insurers would go broke) and the only rational reason to buy insurance is protection from losses that are catastrophic.
It makes much more sense to buy house insurance than car insurance. Buying laptop insurance for instance is ridiculous (except if are a few standard deviations above the norm in terms of recklessness and the insurance covers it even if you drop it). I don't have the data buy I'd bet that many electronics retailers and car rental companies derive a significant part of their income from insurance, because their margins are so high.
I've just seen the movie "Contagion", which is about epidemics, and the idea came to mind that drug companies can fund their research by selling the optionality of buying not-yet approved drugs when they do get approved, so you pay a small insurance premium to guarantee that you are first in line if there is a shortage of medicine of some kind. In other words, a good way to fund the protection of tail risks is to take money from people who worry about tail-risks and not have to convince people who ignore them that they should be worried and pay.
The study should do a follow up looking at corporate risk aversion based on capital structure and holding concentration.
On the first point, a lot of corporate risk aversion comes from strict bond covenants that they have to comply with. My guess would be that highly levered companies purchase much more insurance than mostly equity funded firms.
On the second point, it makes sense that firms pay more for catastrophic insurance. If shareholders hold diversified insurance they shouldn't care about idiosyncratic risk. It makes no sense to sacrifice return on equity in the form of insurance premiums (except in the case of firm-specific distress costs). Catastophic risk on the other hand probably maps more closely to market wide factor risks, which diversified investors still care about.
Of course, shifting this responsibility to corporations only works for local catastrophic risks (where capitalism still functions afterwards). Global catastrophic/existential risks still need to be addressed by the government.
People don't get fired for small loses, but they do get fired for big losses.
If a person is reasonably wealthy, it is generally the cases that ONLY catastrophe insurance is a good purchase, in the sense that on the aggragate, the insurance buyer loses in terms of expected value (otherwise insurers would go broke) and the only rational reason to buy insurance is protection from losses that are catastrophic.
It makes much more sense to buy house insurance than car insurance. Buying laptop insurance for instance is ridiculous (except if are a few standard deviations above the norm in terms of recklessness and the insurance covers it even if you drop it). I don't have the data buy I'd bet that many electronics retailers and car rental companies derive a significant part of their income from insurance, because their margins are so high.
I've just seen the movie "Contagion", which is about epidemics, and the idea came to mind that drug companies can fund their research by selling the optionality of buying not-yet approved drugs when they do get approved, so you pay a small insurance premium to guarantee that you are first in line if there is a shortage of medicine of some kind. In other words, a good way to fund the protection of tail risks is to take money from people who worry about tail-risks and not have to convince people who ignore them that they should be worried and pay.
The study should do a follow up looking at corporate risk aversion based on capital structure and holding concentration.
On the first point, a lot of corporate risk aversion comes from strict bond covenants that they have to comply with. My guess would be that highly levered companies purchase much more insurance than mostly equity funded firms.
On the second point, it makes sense that firms pay more for catastrophic insurance. If shareholders hold diversified insurance they shouldn't care about idiosyncratic risk. It makes no sense to sacrifice return on equity in the form of insurance premiums (except in the case of firm-specific distress costs). Catastophic risk on the other hand probably maps more closely to market wide factor risks, which diversified investors still care about.
Of course, shifting this responsibility to corporations only works for local catastrophic risks (where capitalism still functions afterwards). Global catastrophic/existential risks still need to be addressed by the government.