SIAMAK DANESHVARAN and ROBERT E. MORDEN
The insurance industry, in general, accepts large risks due to the combined severity and frequency of catastrophic events; further, these risks are poorly defined given the small…
Abstract
The insurance industry, in general, accepts large risks due to the combined severity and frequency of catastrophic events; further, these risks are poorly defined given the small amount of data available for extreme events. It is important for the equitable transfer of risk to understand and quantify this risk as accurately as possible. As this risk is propagated to the capital markets, more and more parties will be exposed. An important part of pricing insurance‐linked securities (ILS) is quantifying the uncertainties existing in the physical parameters of the catastrophe models, including both the hazard and damage models. Given the amount of reliable data (1945 till present) on important storm parameters such as central pressure drop, radius to maximum winds, and non‐stationarity of the occurrence rate, moments estimated for these parameters are not highly reliable and knowledge uncertainty must be considered. Also, the engineering damage model for a given class of building in a large portfolio is subject to uncertainty associated with the quality of the buildings. A sample portfolio is used to demonstrate the impact of these knowledge uncertainties. Uncertainties associated with variability of statistics on central pressure drop, occurrence rate, and building quality were estimated and later propagated through a tropical cyclone catastrophe model to quantify the uncertainty of PML results. Finally their effect on the pricing of a typical insurance‐linked security (ILS) was estimated. Statistics of spread over LIBOR given different bond ratings/probability of attachment are presented using a pricing model (Lane [2000]). For a typical ILS, a relatively large coefficient of variation for both probability of attachment and spread over LIBOR was observed. This in turn leads to a rather large price uncertainty for a typical layer and may explain why rational investors expect a higher return for assuming catastrophe risk. The results hold independent of pricing model used. The objective of this study is to quantify this uncertainty for a simple call option and demonstrate its effect on pricing.
Siamak Daneshvaran and Robert E. Morden
Perils of tornado and hail cause large amounts of loss every year. Based on the data provided by Property Claims Services, since 1949, tornado, hail and straight‐line‐wind losses…
Abstract
Purpose
Perils of tornado and hail cause large amounts of loss every year. Based on the data provided by Property Claims Services, since 1949, tornado, hail and straight‐line‐wind losses account for more than 40 percent of total natural losses in the USA. Given the high frequency of tornado and damaging hail in the continental USA, quantifying these risks will be an important advancement in pricing them for insurance/reinsurance purposes. In the absence of a realistic physical model, which would look at these perils on a cluster/outbreak basis, it is not possible to underwrite these risks effectively. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the tornado risk.
Design/methodology/approach
A tornado wind‐field model is developed based on the model used by Wen and Ang. The model is calibrated to the specifications given in the Fujita intensity scale. To estimate the tornado hazard, a historical database is generated and de‐trended using the information provided by Storm Prediction Center along with the dataset given by Grazulis. This new historical database together with a reinsurance timeframe criterion in mind was used to define outbreaks. These outbreaks are used in a Monte‐Carlo simulation process to generate a large number of outbreaks representing 35,000 years of simulated data. This event‐set is used to estimate spatial frequency contours and loss analyses.
Findings
The results focus on the spatial frequency of occurrence of tornadoes in the USA. The losses are tallied using multiple occurrences of tornado and/or hail per outbreak. The distribution of loss, both on per occurrence and on aggregate basis, are discussed.
Originality/value
This paper is believed to be the first one to use a tornado wind‐field model, outbreak model, and vulnerability models, which estimate both spatial distribution of hazard and location‐based distribution of losses. Estimation of losses due to hail is also provided.
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The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains…
Abstract
The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.
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It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields…
Abstract
It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.
Compares the cultures and management styles of six countries: The Netherlands, Brazil, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Spain. The comparative analysis is based on country…
Abstract
Compares the cultures and management styles of six countries: The Netherlands, Brazil, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Spain. The comparative analysis is based on country background, national culture, business culture, business organization, working practices and relations, and management style.
ONE or two questions raised by the writer of “Letters on our Affairs” this month are of some urgency. The first, the physical condition of books, is one that is long over‐due for…
Abstract
ONE or two questions raised by the writer of “Letters on our Affairs” this month are of some urgency. The first, the physical condition of books, is one that is long over‐due for full discussion with a view to complete revision of our method. The increased book fund of post‐war years, and the unexpected success of the twopenny library, have brought us to the point when we should concentrate upon beautiful and clean editions of good books, and encourage the public to use them. “Euripides” is quite right in his contention that there is too much dependence upon the outcasts of the circulating library for replenishing the stocks of public lending libraries. We say this gravely and advisedly. Many librarians depend almost entirely upon the off‐scourings of commercial libraries for their fiction. The result, of course, is contempt of that stock from all readers who are not without knowledge of books. It is the business of the public library now to scrap all books that are stained, unpleasant to the sight, in bad print, and otherwise unattractive. Of old, it was necessary for us to work hard, and by careful conservation of sometimes quite dirty books, in order to get enough books to serve our readers. To‐day this is no longer the case, except in quite backward areas. The average well‐supported public library—and there are many now in that category—should aim at a reduction of stock to proportions which are really useful, which are good and which are ultimately attractive if not beautiful. The time has arrived when a dirty book, or a poorly printed book, or a book which has no artistic appeal, should be regarded as a reproach to the library preserving it.
Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).
WE all scan the advertisements for librarians in The Times Literary Supplement and other journals every week, and we might be forgiven for inferring from them that there is a…
Abstract
WE all scan the advertisements for librarians in The Times Literary Supplement and other journals every week, and we might be forgiven for inferring from them that there is a dearth of those who, by a curious inversion, are asked for as “A.L.A's or F.L.A's.” In contradiction, it would appear that about 1,500 youngsters are trying to enter the profession by way of the Entrance Examination every year. Youngsters beginning life, especially girls, do usually prefer or are constrained by their parents, the cost of living, and the scarcity of lodgings, to start in their home towns and still to live at home.. Higher in the scale the whole position is tangled in various ways. Many of the entrants fall by the way; commercial pay exceeds municipal and other library pay; more find the work uncongenial, as library work certainly is except to those who are book‐lovers, have a strong social sense, and, in the best cases, a flair for publicity and business administration. Others marry and leave, although some stay on with the ring on the third finger of their left hand. Thus, when maturity is reached, only a relatively few, even amongst the mature, have become chartered librarians and, fewer still, Fellows—as is natural seeing that the fellowship is a much more severe test nowadays and only much love and industry can achieve it. This position is even worse in some other branches of the municipal service; our salaries do not draw the best of the young folk permanently and many a Treasurer's office, to take one branch only, is complaining of want of good recruits. Those of our good ones who do remain do so because of the work and not the pay. Authority has always known this, from the day when Gladstone opined that working in the British Museum was so delightful that it was incredible that the workers wanted any pay at all. Chief librarians today have been most unfairly neglected by the salary negotiating bodies who have dealt generously with several other kinds of chief officers in the local services.
THE interval between the Library Association Conference and the printing of THE LIBRARY WORLD is too brief for more than a series of impressions of it. Comment is probably…
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THE interval between the Library Association Conference and the printing of THE LIBRARY WORLD is too brief for more than a series of impressions of it. Comment is probably preferable in our pages to mere record. The Association is publishing in the next few weeks all the papers that were read and, as we hope, the substance at least of the unwritten contributions. In this second particular reports in recent years have been lacking. A report that merely states that “Mr. Smith seconded the vote of thanks” is so much waste of paper and interests no one but Mr. Smith. If Mr. Smith, however, said anything we should know what it was he said. What we may say is that the Conference was worthy of the centenary we were celebrating. The attendance, over two thousand, was the largest on record, and there has not been so large a gathering of overseas librarians and educationists since the jubilee meeting of the Library Association at Edinburgh in 1927. So much was this so that the meeting took upon it a certain international aspect, as at least one of the non‐librarian speakers told its members, adding that it was apparently a library league of nations of the friendliest character. It followed that an unusual, but quite agreeable, part of each general session was devoted to speeches of congratulation and good‐will from the foreign delegates. All, with the possible exception of the United States, dwelt upon the debt of their countries in library matters to the English Public Libraries Acts and their consequences. Even Dr. Evans, in a very pleasant speech, showed that he had reached some tentative conclusions about English librarianship.
Natural selection—survival of the fittest—is as old as life itself. Applied genetics which is purposeful in contrast to natural selection also has a long history, particularly in…
Abstract
Natural selection—survival of the fittest—is as old as life itself. Applied genetics which is purposeful in contrast to natural selection also has a long history, particularly in agriculture; it has received impetus from the more exacting demands of the food industry for animal breeds with higher lean : fat and meat : bone ratios, for crops resistant to the teeming world of parasites. Capturing the exquisite scent, the colours and form beautiful of a rose is in effect applied genetics and it has even been applied to man. For example, Frederick the Great, Emperor of Prussia, to maintain a supply of very tall men for his guards—his Prussian Guards averaged seven feet in height—ordered them to marry very tall women to produce offspring carrying the genes of great height. In recent times, however, research and experiment in genetic control, more in the nature of active interference with genetic composition, has developed sufficiently to begin yielding results. It is self‐evident that in the field of micro‐organisms, active interference or manipulations will produce greater knowledge and understanding of the gene actions than in any other field or by any other techniques. The phenomenon of “transferred drug resistance”, the multi‐factorial resistance, of a chemical nature, transferred from one species of micro‐organisms to another, from animal to human pathogens, its role in mainly intestinal pathology and the serious hazards which have arisen from it; all this has led to an intensive study of plasmids and their mode of transmission. The work of the Agricultural Research Council's biologists (reported elsewhere in this issue) in relation to nitrogen‐fixing genes and transfer from one organism able to fix nitrogen to another not previously having this ability, illustrates the extreme importance of this new field. Disease susceptibility, the inhibition of invasiveness which can be acquired by relatively “silent” micro‐organisms, a better understanding of virulence and the possible “disarming” of organisms, particularly those of particular virulence to vulnerable groups. Perhaps this is looking for too much too soon, but Escherichia coli would seem to offer more scope for genetic experiments than most; it has serotypes of much variability and viability; and its life and labours in the human intestine have assumed considerable importance in recent years. The virulence of a few of its serotypes constitute an important field in food epidemiology. Their capacity to transfer plasmids—anent transfer of drug resistance— to strains of other organisms resident in the intestines, emphasizes the need for close study, with safeguards.