Acts of God and Man: Ruminations on Risk and Insurance
Acts of God and Man: Ruminations on Risk and Insurance
Cite
Abstract
This book examines traditional insurance risks such as earthquakes, storms, terrorist attacks, and other disasters. It begins with a discussion of how the risk of such “acts of God and men” impact on our lives, health, and possessions. It then proceeds to introduce the statistical techniques necessary for analyzing these uncertainties. It explains that quantifying the risks that such disasters pose is difficult but that it is crucial for achieving the financing objectives of insurance. The book guides readers through the methods available for identifying and measuring such risks, financing their consequences, and forecasting their future behaviour (within the limits of science). It also considers the experience of risk from the perspectives of both policyholders and insurance companies, and compares their respective responses. The discussion of the risks inherent in the private insurance industry leads to a discussion of the government's role as both market regulator and potential “insurer of last resort.” The book concludes with an interdisciplinary investigation into the nature of uncertainty, incorporating ideas from physics, philosophy, and game theory to assess science's limitations in predicting the ramifications of risk.
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Front Matter
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1 Living with Risk
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1
The Alpha and the Omega of Risk: The Significance of Mortality
Michael R. Powers
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2
Into the Unknown: Modeling Uncertainty
Michael R. Powers
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3
The Shapes of Things to Come: Probabilities and Parameters
Michael R. Powers
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4
The Value of Experience: Independence and Estimation
Michael R. Powers
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5
It’s All in Your Head: Bayesian Decision Making
Michael R. Powers
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1
The Alpha and the Omega of Risk: The Significance of Mortality
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2 The Realm of Insurance
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6
Aloofness and Quasi-Aloofness: Defining Insurance Risks
Michael R. Powers
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7
Trustworthy Transfer; Probable Pooling: Financing Insurance Risks
Michael R. Powers
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8
God-Awful Guessing and Bad Behavior: Solvency and Underwriting
Michael R. Powers
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9
The Good, the Bad,…: The Role of Risk Classification
Michael R. Powers
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10
And the Lawyerly: Liability and Government Compensation
Michael R. Powers
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6
Aloofness and Quasi-Aloofness: Defining Insurance Risks
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3 Scientific Challenges
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11
What Is Randomness? Knowable and Unknowable Complexity
Michael R. Powers
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12
Patterns, Real and Imagined: Observation and Theory
Michael R. Powers
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13
False Choices and Black Boxes: The Costs of Limited Data
Michael R. Powers
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14
Nullifying the Dull Hypothesis: Conventional Versus Personalized Science
Michael R. Powers
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15
Games and the Mind: Modeling Human Behavior
Michael R. Powers
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11
What Is Randomness? Knowable and Unknowable Complexity
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End Matter
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