Catastrophe Insurance Options: Are They Zero-Beta Assets?

Robert E. Hoyt and Kathleen A. McCullough

Journal of Insurance Issues, 1999, vol. 22, issue 2, 147-163

Abstract: PCS Catastrophe Insurance Options were released in 1995 as a means of providing property and casualty insurers with a method of hedging catastrophe exposures. The options are based on the Property Claims Services Office (PCS) index of catastrophe losses. Due to the fact that the underlying index is uncorrelated to movements in the capital markets, it is believed that PCS Catastrophe Insurance Options represent zero-beta assets. If this is true, then investment in catastrophe options provides investors with a way to further diversify the current asset portfolios, thereby improving portfolios’ reward-to-variability ratios. This study reviews actual PCS Catastrophe Insurance Options performance to assess whether the hypothesis that these contracts represent zero-beta assets is supported. In spite of relatively low liquidity in this market thus far, our results do suggest that the actual contracts do represent zero-beta assets.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.insuranceissues.org/PDFs/222HM.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wri:journl:v:22:y:1999:i:2:p:147-163

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Insurance Issues is currently edited by James Barrese

More articles in Journal of Insurance Issues from Western Risk and Insurance Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by James Barrese ().