Vivre la catastrophe

Still life with open Bible and Zola's La Joie de Vivre.

Catastrophe Archetypes

We propose an Integrated Systemic Theory of Catastrophes (ISTC) using System Dynamics to model and to understand common systemic structures and behaviours of catastrophes. Current catastrophe research concentrates on a specific field and does not capture complex multi-field catastrophe scenarios that cannot be reduced to a single scientific field. For example, when looking at famines the elemen...

Electromechanical Catastrophe

A transducer is a system that couples two loads. For example, an electromechanical transducer couples a mechanical force and an electrical voltage. A two-load, nonlinear system can exhibit rich behavior of bifurcation, which can be displayed in a three-dimensional space, with the horizontal plane representing the two loads, and the vertical axis representing the state of the system. In this thr...

Do Firms Manage Catastrophe and Non-Catastrophe Risks Differently?

Recent disasters and historical insurance payouts have triggered renewed interest in how firms manage their left-tail exposure. Using a unique dataset of fully described insurance policies purchased by large U.S. firms, we provide the first consistent estimates of premium elasticity of corporate demand for insurance for both catastrophe and noncatastrophe risks. We do so by combining this datas...

Pricing Catastrophe Reinsurance with Reinstatement Provisions Using a Catastrophe Model

In recent years catastrophe reinsurers' use of catastrophe models has been increasing until currently virtually all of the catastrophe reinsurers in the world use a catastrophe model to aid them in their pricing and portfolio management decisions. This paper explicitly models various types of reinstatement provisions, including reinstatements that are limited by the number of occurrences and by...