Description: Recurring column that lists recent publications in risk management of note to readers

Description: This article describes risk modeling and how to build a risk intelligence system.

Description: In this article, the author discusses earthquake modeling.

Description: Book review of Extreme Risk Management: Revolutionary Approaches to Evaluating and Measuring Risk by author Christina Ray.

Description: Listing and description of key articles in August 2011 issue of Risk Management. Topics include Predictive Modeling, Risk management and Solvency II.

Description: This paper evaluates the current practice of operational risk management in the insurance sector. Operational risk is nothing new in insurance, but, because of regulatory requirements, companies have initiated computation of risk capital for their operational losses. The current effort to manage operational risk is not a naturally evolving phenomenon, and operational risk, in the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s Basel II definition, is unlikely to be a significant cause of insurers’ failure. In addition, the current Basel II definition of operational risk is not suitable for the insurance sector. Consequently, the invention of models and tools based on the definition is incomplete and illusionary. My findings are based on the analysis of dozens of interviews with insurance industry professionals. I demonstrate the way operational risk is quantified in practice, show that the result obtained from this computation is of littl e use in managerial decision making and propose a set of policy recommendations illustrating the characteristics of operational risk in insurance. This study can be used as a platform for launching dialogues to initiate fresh thinking about operational risk in insurance beyond the current artificial and narrow boundaries.

Description: From a simple mathematical model of the underlying economics, I first predicted this crisis in July of 2004. An economic dynamic relating very low interest rates to the structure of the demand curve in the housing market made this outcome foreseeable, indeed inevitable. The current crisis had a mathematical cause. Essay on the collapse of the housing bubble.

Description: This paper examines the characteristics of an ideal product and the type of institution that would be well positioned to offer the ideal product which would allow a housing asset to be a viable retirement asset.

Description: Recurring column that lists recent publications in risk management of note to readers.

Description: Various ingredients contributed to the current financial crisis, and we can learn many lessons from the crisis. Yet rather than myopically focus on the particular minutiae of the current circumstances, we ought to pay special attention to those central issues that underpin the current crisis, past crises and future crises. Focus is on risk adjusting reported profits.