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Jel Classification:G22 

Working Paper
Last Resort Insurance: Wildfires and the Regulation of a Crashing Market

An increasing number of people are denied home insurance coverage in the private market and must instead turn to state-sponsored plans known as “Insurers of Last Resort.” This paper examines how insurers of last resort interact with the private market under increasing disaster risks. We first present a simple model of an adversely selected insurance market, highlighting that the insurer of last resort allows strict price regulation to be compatible with full insurance. We then empirically study the California non-renewal moratoriums, a regulation that forced insurers to supply insurance ...
Working Papers , Paper 2510

Working Paper
Insurers’ Investments and Insurance Prices

We develop a theory that connects insurance prices, insurance companies’ investment behavior, and equilibrium asset prices. Consistent with the model’s predictions, we show empirically that (1) insurers with more stable insurance funding take more investment risk and, therefore, earn higher average investment returns; (2) insurers set lower prices on policies when expected investment returns are higher, both in the cross-section of insurance companies and in the time series. Our results hold for both life insurance and property and casualty insurance companies. The findings show that ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2024-058

Working Paper
Extrapolating Long-Maturity Bond Yields for Financial Risk Measurement

Insurance companies and pension funds have liabilities far into the future and typically well beyond the longest maturity bonds trading in fixed-income markets. Such long-lived liabilities still need to be discounted, and yield curve extrapolations based on the information in observed yields can be used. We use dynamic Nelson-Siegel (DNS) yield curve models for extrapolating risk-free yield curves for Switzerland, Canada, France, and the U.S. We find slight biases in extrapolated long bond yields of a few basis points. In addition, the DNS model allows the generation of useful financial risk ...
Working Paper Series , Paper 2018-9

Working Paper
Equilibrium with Mutual Organizations in Adverse Selection Economies

An equilibrium concept in the Debreu (1954) theory-of-value tradition is developed for a class of adverse selection economies and applied to the Spence signaling and Rothschild-Stiglitz (1976) adverse selection environments. The equilibrium exists and is optimal. Further, all equilibria have the same individual type utility vector. The economies are large with a finite number of types that maximize expected utility on an underlying commodity space. An implication of the analysis is that the invisible hand works for this class of adverse selection economies.
Working Papers , Paper 717

Working Paper
Affordability, Financial Innovation, and the Start of the Housing Boom

At their peak in 2005, roughly 60 percent of all purchase mortgage loans originated in the United States contained at least one non-traditional feature. These features, which allowed borrowers easier access to credit through teaser interest rates, interest-only or negative amortization periods, and extended payment terms, have been the subject of much regulatory and popular criticism. In this paper, we construct a novel county-level dataset to analyze the relationship between rising house prices and non-traditional features of mortgage contracts. We apply a break-point methodology and find ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP-2019-1

Working Paper
Insurance, Weather, and Financial Stability

In this paper, we introduce a model to study the interaction between insurance and banking. We build on the Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1980, which significantly expanded and restructured the decades-old federal crop insurance program and adverse weather shocks—over-exposure of crops to heat and acute weather events—to investigate some insights from our model. Banks increased lending to the agricultural sector in counties with higher insurance coverage after 1980, even when affected by adverse weather shocks. Further, while they increased risky lending, they were sufficiently ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2024-067

Newsletter
How FAIR Plans Confronted Redlining in America

Access to financial services, including insurance, is vital for the growth and development of communities. Without banks issuing residential mortgages and business loans, it is extremely difficult for people to purchase homes and grow their businesses. Without property insurance, banks will be reluctant to provide such loans. Thus, the inability to access property insurance makes communities more vulnerable to cycles of disinvestment and decline. In this Chicago Fed Letter, I examine the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) plans, how they addressed the issues of insurance ...
Chicago Fed Letter , Volume No 484 , Pages 8

Working Paper
New Evidence on an Old Unanswered Question : Why Some Borrowers Purchase Credit Insurance and Other Debt Protection and Some Do Not

Credit related insurance and other debt protection are products sold in conjunction with credit that extinguish a consumer?s debt or suspends its periodic payments if events like death, disability, or involuntary unemployment occur. High penetration rates observed in the 1950s and 1960s raised concerns about coercion in the sale of credit insurance. This study presents evidence on credit insurance purchase and debt protection decisions from a new survey. The findings provide little evidence of widespread or systematic coercion in purchases. Instead, findings suggest that risk aversion and ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2017-122

Working Paper
Reforming the US Long-Term Care Insurance Market

Nursing home risk is significant and costly. Yet, most Americans pay for long-term care (LTC) expenses out-of-pocket. This chapter examines reforms to both public and private LTCI provision using a structural model of the US LTCI market. Three policies are considered: universal public LTCI, no public LTCI coverage, and a policy that exempts asset holdings from the public insurance asset test on a dollar-for-dollar basis with private LTCI coverage. We find that this third reform enhances social welfare and creates a vibrant private LTCI market while preserving the safety net provided by public ...
Working Papers , Paper 24-17

Working Paper
Recourse as Shadow Equity: Evidence from Commercial Real Estate Loans

We study the role that recourse plays in the commercial real estate loan contracts of the largest U.S. banks. We find that recourse is valued by lenders and is treated as a substitute for conventional equity. At origination, recourse loans have rate spreads that are at least 20 basis points lower and loan-to-value ratios that are around 3 percentage points higher than non-recourse loans. Dynamically, recourse affects loan modification negotiations by providing additional bargaining power to the lender. Recourse loans were half as likely to receive accommodation during the COVID-19 pandemic, ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2021-079

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Durkin, Thomas A. 9 items

Elliehausen, Gregory E. 9 items

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Kurtzman, Robert J. 8 items

Loewenstein, Lara 7 items

Miller, Jr., Thomas W. 7 items

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