TY  - JOUR
AU  - Froot,Kenneth A.
AU  - O'Connell,Paul G. J.
TI  - The Pricing of U.S. Catastrophe Reinsurance
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6043
PY  - 1997
Y2  - May 1997
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6043
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6043.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Kenneth A. Froot
Graduate School of Business
Harvard University
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
Tel: 617/495-6677
Fax: 617/496-7357
E-Mail: kfroot@hbs.edu

Paul G. J. O'Connell
M1  - published as Kenneth A. Froot, Paul G. J. O'Connell. "The Pricing of U.S. Catastrophe Reinsurance," in Kenneth A. Froot, editor, "The Financing of Catastrophe Risk" University of Chicago Press (1999)

AB  - We explore two theories that have been advanced to explain the patterns in U.S. catastrophe reinsurance pricing.  The first is that price variation is tied to demand shocks, driven in effect by changes in actuarially expected losses.  The second holds that the supply of capital to the reinsurance industry is less than perfectly elastic, with the consequence that prices are bid up whenever existing funds are depleted by catastrophe losses.  Using detailed reinsurance contract data from Guy Carpenter & Co. over a 25-year period, we test these two theories.  Our results suggest that capital market imperfections are more important than shifts in actuarial valuation for understanding catastrophe reinsurance pricing.  Supply, rather than demand, shifts seem to explain most features of the market in the aftermath of a loss.
ER  -