January 28, 2019 Benjamin Collier and Marc Ragin Households face a high-stakes problem in selecting an insurance contract. How much coverage should they buy? What deductible should they choose? The household must weigh premiums paid today against losses from an unlikely – but possibly catastrophic – future event such as…Read More
ESG Initiative News
A New Measure to Assess Companies’ External Engagement
(Outlet: LSE Phelan US Centre) – Could a single tweet destroy your company? Just a few years ago, a question like that might have seemed absurd. But now that possibility is something that executives and investors around the world are increasingly thinking and worrying about. Perhaps the most prominent evidence of this trend arrived at the start of 2018, when BlackRock’s Larry Fink laid out in his annual CEO letter what he believes organisations risk when they don’t get smart on social engagement.…Read More
Local Solutions to Flood Insurance Affordability: Portland’s Flood Insurance Savings Program
November 14, 2018 Jacob Sherman and Carolyn Kousky Following pricing changes to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and several years of rising premiums, the city of Portland, Oregon began to see flood insurance as a destabilizing force in some neighborhoods. In the absence of any changes to federal policy,…Read More
Hack-for-Resilience
September 25, 2018 The University of Pennsylvania is home to the world’s first and one of the largest student-run hackathons. Over one weekend in early September roughly 1,200 students converged for PennApps. Over 3,000 students had applied to attend. This year, the Wharton Risk Center’s Policy Incubator and the Insurance…Read More
Recovering from Disasters: Evaluating FEMA’s Housing Assistance Program in the 2017 Hurricane Season
Recovering from Disasters: Evaluating FEMA’s Housing Assistance Program in the 2017 Hurricane Season September 24. 2018 As residents of North Carolina deal with the impacts of Hurricane Florence, many communities in the United States are still recovering from the 2017 hurricane season, one of the most devastating in history. Three…Read More
Florida’s Private Residential Flood Insurance Market
September 20, 2018 Brett Lingle* and Carolyn Kousky Florida homeowners are extremely vulnerable to flood damage, yet many of those at risk are uninsured. For the last fifty years, the federally-run National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has largely been homeowners’ only option for flood insurance. In just the last few…Read More
The 3 Maps That Explain Residential Flood Insurance Purchases
September 17, 2018 Carolyn Kousky and Brett Lingle* Disaster insurance can be a critical part of household and community resilience. Government disaster aid is rarely enough to cover the costs of the repairs and rebuilding that must be done. After Hurricane Harvey, for example, the average household grant from the Federal Emergency Management…Read More
Oregon Improves Agent Knowledge of Flood Insurance
August 30, 2018 Carolyn Kousky and Jacob Sherman Flood insurance can be confusing. It is generally excluded from homeowners policies. The policy terms are not standard. Premiums and fees vary and change over time. Households may be able to lower costs, but they are not informed about ways to do…Read More
Structure of the Residential Flood Insurance Market
August 2, 2018 Carolyn Kousky, Howard Kunreuther, Brett Lingle*, and Leonard Shabman Since 1968, the NFIP has been homeowners’ only option for flood insurance, but over the past several years, a small private market for residential flood insurance has emerged. While it accounts for less than 5% of all residential…Read More
Must Floodplain Buyouts Decrease Tax Revenue?
July 5, 2018 Helen J.P. Wiley Floods are the costliest natural disaster in the United States. 73% of presidential disaster declarations are for flood-related events. of presidential disaster declarations are for flood-related events. Scholars estimate that flood losses will continue to grow, due to economic development in flood-prone areas, as…Read More