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Optimal XL-insurance under Wasserstein-type ambiguity

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  • Birghila, Corina
  • Pflug, Georg Ch.

Abstract

We study the problem of optimal insurance contract design for risk management under a budget constraint. The contract holder takes into consideration that the loss distribution is not entirely known and therefore faces an ambiguity problem. For a given set of models, we formulate a minimax optimization problem of finding an optimal insurance contract that minimizes the distortion risk functional of the retained loss with premium limitation. We demonstrate that under the average value-at-risk measure, the entrance-excess of loss contracts are optimal under ambiguity, and we solve the distributionally robust optimal contract-design problem. It is assumed that the insurance premium is calculated according to a given baseline loss distribution and that the ambiguity set of possible distributions forms a neighborhood of the baseline distribution. To this end, we introduce a contorted Wasserstein distance. This distance is finer in the tails of the distributions compared to the usual Wasserstein distance.

Suggested Citation

  • Birghila, Corina & Pflug, Georg Ch., 2019. "Optimal XL-insurance under Wasserstein-type ambiguity," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 30-43.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:insuma:v:88:y:2019:i:c:p:30-43
    DOI: 10.1016/j.insmatheco.2019.05.005
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

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    2. Corina Birghila & Tim J. Boonen & Mario Ghossoub, 2020. "Optimal Insurance under Maxmin Expected Utility," Papers 2010.07383, arXiv.org.
    3. Cai, Jun & Liu, Fangda & Yin, Mingren, 2024. "Worst-case risk measures of stop-loss and limited loss random variables under distribution uncertainty with applications to robust reinsurance," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 318(1), pages 310-326.
    4. Boonen, Tim J. & Jiang, Wenjun, 2022. "A marginal indemnity function approach to optimal reinsurance under the Vajda condition," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 303(2), pages 928-944.
    5. Corina Birghila & Tim J. Boonen & Mario Ghossoub, 2023. "Optimal insurance under maxmin expected utility," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 467-501, April.
    6. Vincent, Léonard & Albrecher, Hansjörg & Krvavych, Yuriy, 2021. "Structured reinsurance deals with reference to relative market performance," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(PB), pages 125-139.
    7. Liu, Haiyan, 2024. "Worst-case risk with unspecified risk preferences," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 235-248.
    8. Boonen, Tim J. & Jiang, Wenjun, 2024. "Robust insurance design with distortion risk measures," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 316(2), pages 694-706.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Insurance contract; Model error; Minimax solution; Distributional robustness;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

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