IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-00242930.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Dealing with Extreme Events: Challenges for Terrorism Risk Coverage in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Howard Kunreuther

    (Wharton Business School)

  • Erwann Michel-Kerjan

    (CECO - Laboratoire d'économétrie de l'École polytechnique - X - École polytechnique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 (9/11) against the United States as well as other large-scale attacks worldwide raises the fundamental question as to what are the responsibilities of the public and private sectors in reducing the risks of terrorist attacks and who should pay for future losses should the terrorists be successful? In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, which inflicted more than 35 billion dollars of insured losses, many insurers warned that another event of comparable magnitude could do irreparable damage to the industry. Furthermore, they contended that the uncertainties surrounding terrorism risk were so significant that it was, in fact, an uninsurable risk. By early 2002, 45 states in the U.S. permitted insurance companies to exclude terrorism. The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 (TRIA), which provides for up to $100 billion of terrorism insurance, was passed by U.S. Congress on November 26, 2002 and signed into law by President Bush the following month. The Act, based on risk sharing between the insurance industry and federal government, expires on December 31, 2005. Currently it is unclear what type of terrorism insurance program will emerge in the United States after 2005. Given the developments since September 11th and the specific characteristics of large-scale international terrorism, we contend that government needs to continue to play an important role in concert with the private sector in providing insurance against losses from this type of extreme event. However, as we suggest in this paper, TRIA may not be the most desirable way for the federal government to assist the private sector in providing insurance against terrorism. As a sustainable terrorism insurance program is a key component of any national strategy for homeland security and that it is still on the agenda in the United States, this papers aims at providing a discussion on several alternatives. It suggests a specific national program for covering firms operating in the U.S. against terrorism when TRIA expires.

Suggested Citation

  • Howard Kunreuther & Erwann Michel-Kerjan, 2004. "Dealing with Extreme Events: Challenges for Terrorism Risk Coverage in the United States," Working Papers hal-00242930, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-00242930
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-00242930
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-00242930/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kent Smetters, 2005. "Insuring Against Terrorism: The Policy Challenge," NBER Working Papers 11038, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Cummins, J. David & Danzon, Patricia M., 1997. "Price, Financial Quality, and Capital Flows in Insurance Markets," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 3-38, January.
    3. Arnott, Richard J. & Greenwald, Bruce & Kanbur, Ravi & Nalebuff, Barry, 2003. "Joseph Stiglitz and Economics for an Imperfect World," Working Papers 127202, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    4. Walter Enders & Todd Sandler, 2000. "Is Transnational Terrorism Becoming More Threatening?," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 44(3), pages 307-332, June.
    5. Kunreuther, Howard, 1996. "Mitigating Disaster Losses through Insurance," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 12(2-3), pages 171-187, May.
    6. Lapan, Harvey E & Sandler, Todd, 1988. "To Bargain or Not to Bargain: That Is the Question," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(2), pages 16-21, May.
    7. Froot, Kenneth A. & O'Connell, Paul G.J., 2008. "On the pricing of intermediated risks: Theory and application to catastrophe reinsurance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 69-85, January.
    8. Kunreuther, Howard & Heal, Geoffrey, 2003. "Interdependent Security," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 26(2-3), pages 231-249, March-May.
    9. Anne Gron, 1994. "Capacity Constraints and Cycles in Property-Casualty Insurance Markets," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(1), pages 110-127, Spring.
    10. Ralph A. Winter, 1991. "The Liability Insurance Market," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 115-136, Summer.
    11. Doherty, Neil A & Posey, Lisa Lipowski, 1997. "Availability Crises in Insurance Markets: Optimal Contracts with Asymmetric Information and Capacity Constraints," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 55-80, October.
    12. Doherty, Neil A & Lamm-Tennant, Joan & Starks, Laura T, 2003. "Insuring September 11th: Market Recovery and Transparency," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 26(2-3), pages 179-199, March-May.
    13. Lee, Dwight R, 1988. "Free Riding and Paid Riding in the Fight against Terrorism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(2), pages 22-26, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. B. Peter Rosendorff & Todd Sandler, 2005. "The Political Economy of Transnational Terrorism," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 49(2), pages 171-182, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Howard Kunreuther & Erwann Michel-Kerjan, 2004. "Policy Watch: Challenges for Terrorism Risk Insurance in the United States," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(4), pages 201-214, Fall.
    2. Howard C. Kunreuther & Erwann O. Michel-Kerjan, 2007. "Evaluating The Effectiveness of Terrorism Risk Financing Solutions," NBER Working Papers 13359, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Erwann Michel-Kerjan & Paul A. Raschky & Howard C. Kunreuther, 2009. "Corporate Demand for Insurance: An Empirical Analysis of the U.S. Market for Catastrophe and Non-Catastrophe Risks," Working Papers hal-00372420, HAL.
    4. Ning Wang & Yiling Deng, 2016. "Market responses to loss shocks and insurers' post-catastrophe performance in the US property-casualty insurance market," International Journal of Economics and Business Research, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 11(3), pages 231-246.
    5. Dionne, Georges & Harrington, Scott, 2017. "Insurance and Insurance Markets," Working Papers 17-2, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management.
    6. Erwann Michel-Kerjan, 2003. "Terrorisme à grande échelle partage de risques et politiques publiques," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 113(5), pages 625-648.
    7. Sandler, Todd & Enders, Walter, 2004. "An economic perspective on transnational terrorism," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 301-316, June.
    8. Erwann Michel‐Kerjan & Burkhard Pedell, 2006. "How Does the Corporate World Cope with Mega‐Terrorism? Puzzling Evidence from Terrorism Insurance Markets," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 18(4), pages 61-75, September.
    9. Doherty, Neil A. & Laux, Christian & Muermann, Alexander, 2010. "Insuring Non-verifiable Losses and the Role of Internediaries," Working Papers 11-31, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center.
    10. Neil A. Doherty & Christian Laux & Alexander Muermann, 2015. "Insuring Nonverifiable Losses," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 19(1), pages 283-316.
    11. Kenneth A. Froot, 2007. "Risk Management, Capital Budgeting, and Capital Structure Policy for Insurers and Reinsurers," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 74(2), pages 273-299, June.
    12. António Miguel Martins & Pedro Correia & Ricardo Gouveia, 2024. "The impact of the Russia–Ukraine war on the world’s largest listed insurance firms," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 49(4), pages 779-803, October.
    13. Bruno S. Frey & Simon Luechinger, 2005. "Measuring terrorism," Chapters, in: Alain Marciano & Jean-Michel Josselin (ed.), Law and the State, chapter 6, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Subhayu Bandyopadhyay & Todd Sandler, 2011. "The Interplay Between Preemptive and Defensive Counterterrorism Measures: A Two‐stage Game," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 78(311), pages 546-564, July.
    15. Konrad, Kai A., 2002. "Terrorism and the state [Terrorismus und der Staat]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance FS IV 02-15, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    16. Marek Loužek, 2009. "Ekonomie bezpečnosti - jsou teroristé racionální? [Economics of security - are terrorists rational?]," Politická ekonomie, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2009(2), pages 177-193.
    17. Marc A. Ragin & Martin Halek, 2016. "Market Expectations Following Catastrophes: An Examination of Insurance Broker Returns," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 83(4), pages 849-876, December.
    18. J. Cummins & Neil Doherty, 2002. "Capitalization of the Property-Liability Insurance Industry: Overview," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 21(1), pages 5-14, February.
    19. Seungmook Choi & Don Hardigree & Paul D. Thistle, 2002. "The Property/Liability Insurance Cycle: A Comparison of Alternative Models," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 68(3), pages 530-548, January.
    20. Catherine Bruneau & Nadia Sghaier, 2008. "Les cycles de souscription de l’assurance non vie en France," Working Papers hal-04140756, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-00242930. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.