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I build an equilibrium model trying to reconcile investor preferences with several features of the cat bond market. The driving force behind the model is a habit process, in that catastrophes are rare economic shocks that could bring investors closer to their subsistence level. The calibration requires shocks with an impact between −1% and −3% to explain a reasonable level of cat bond spreads. Such investor preferences are not only able to generate realistic cat bond returns and price comovement among different perils, but may also able to explain why cat bonds offer higher rewards compared to equally rated corporate bonds.

This case highlights a brave Syrian man’s act toward social responsibility. Mohammad Alaa Aljaleel, an ambulance driver established an animal sanctuary to save and take care of the animals who were victim of the Civil War in Aleppo, Syria. Instead of finding a safer place for himself, he preferred to take care of the animals who were left behind by their owners. But it was not an easy task for him to handle alone and thus he sought help and donation from others. He and his team not only created the animal sanctuary, but also established orphanage and children playground with the money they received. During this process, Alaa faced lots of challenges, but he did not give up his duty toward animals and the other needy. This case teaches that we have responsibility toward the nature and animals too.

This chapter explores how the ideal of autonomous ecological living – ecotopia – is created and compromised by the everyday cultural life of mainstream society. It investigates the degree to which the structures of the mainstream are eluded, changed and subverted to create ‘ecotopia’, and also how this ideal is everyday compromised to survive. Drawing on empirical research undertaken at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), this chapter argues that fragmented utopias are inevitable when attempting to live ecologically in twenty-first century Britain. However, the elusiveness of ecotopia offers an important opportunity to normalise these experiments in ecological living and emphasise their connections and capacity to inform mainstream society.

Catastrophe (CAT) events associated with natural catastrophes and man-made disasters cause profound impacts on the insurance industry. This research thus reviews the impact of CAT risk on the insurance industry and how traditional reinsurance and securitized risk-transfer instruments are used for managing CAT risk.

This research reviews the impact of CAT risk on the insurance industry and how traditional reinsurance and securitized risk-transfer instruments are used for managing CAT risk. Apart from many negative influences, CAT events can increase the net revenue of the insurance industry around CAT events and improve insurance demand over the post-CAT periods. The underwriting cycle of reinsurance causes inefficiencies in transferring CAT risks. Securitized risk-transfer instruments resolve some inefficiencies of the reinsurance market, but are subject to moral hazard, basis risk, credit risk, regulatory uncertainty, etc. The authors introduce some popular securitized solutions and use Merton's structural framework to demonstrate how to value these CAT-linked securities. The hybrid solutions by combining reinsurance with securitized CAT instruments are expected to offer promising applications for CAT risk management.

The authors introduce some popular securitized solutions and use Merton's structural framework to demonstrate how to value these CAT-linked securities. The hybrid solutions by combining reinsurance with securitized CAT instruments are expected to offer promising applications for CAT risk management.

This research reviews a broad array of impacts of CAT risks on the (re)insurance industry. CAT events challenge (re)insurance capacity and influence insurers' supply decisions and reconstruction costs in the aftermath of catastrophes. While losses from natural catastrophes are the primary threat to property–casualty insurers, the mortality risk posed by influenza pandemics is a leading CAT risk for life insurers. At the same time, natural catastrophes and man-made disasters cause distinct impacts on (re)insures. Man-made disasters can increase the correlation between insurance stocks and the overall market, and natural catastrophes reduce the above correlation. It should be noted that huge CAT losses can also improve (re)insurance demand during the postevent period and thus bring long-term effects to the (re)insurance industry.

To develop a theory of concepts that solves the combination problem, i.e. to deliver a description of the combination of concepts. We also investigate the so‐called “pet fish problem” in concept research.

The set of contexts and properties of a concept are embedded in the complex Hilbert space of quantum mechanics. States are unit vectors or density operators and context and properties are orthogonal projections.

The way calculations are done in Hilbert space makes it possible to model how context influences the state of a concept. Moreover, a solution to the combination problem is proposed. Using the tensor product, a natural product in Hilbert space mathematics, a procedure for describing combined concepts is elaborated. This procedure also provides a solution to the pet‐fish problem, and it allows the modeling of an arbitrary number of combined concepts. By way of example, a model for a simple sentence containing a subject, a predicate and an object, is presented.

The combination problem is considered to be one of the crucial unsolved problems in concept research. Also the pet‐fish problem has not been solved by earlier attempts of modeling.

CATS provides most of the needed acquisitions operations for a typical library. It is easily mastered and straightforward, even for the most unsophisticated user. CATS is versatile, flexible and essentially free of awkward demands and hidden traps. For those who already own the dBase III database package, on which CATS depends for its operation, the price of CATS is certainly an attractive one. Libraries needing instant acquisitions automation should give it serious consideration. CATS runs on IBM/PCs and compatible computers. It requires the use of the dBase III database package. CATS sells for $100 from David Morse or Alice Karasick, USC Norris Medical Library, 2003 Zonal Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA. (213) 224–7413.

Insurance‐linked securities can benefit both issuers and investors; they supply insurance and reinsurance companies with additional risk capital at reasonable prices (with little or no credit risk), and supply excess returns to investors that are uncorrelated with the returns of other financial assets. This article explains the terminology of insurance and reinsurance, the structure of insurance‐linked securities, and provides an overview of major transactions. First, there is a discussion of how stochastic catastrophe modeling has been applied to assess the risk of natural catastrophes, including the reliability and validation of the risk models. Second, the authors compare the risk‐adjusted returns of recent securitizations on the basis of relative value. Compared with high‐yield bonds, catastrophe (“CAT”) bonds have wide spreads and very attractive Sharpe ratios. In fact, the risk‐adjusted returns on CAT bonds dominate high‐yield bonds. Furthermore, since natural catastrophe risk is essentially uncorrelated with market risk, high expected excess returns make CAT bonds high‐alpha assets. The authors illustrate this point and show that a relatively small allocation of insurance‐linked securities within a fixed income portfolio can enhance the expected return and simultaneously decrease risk, without significantly changing the skewness and kurtosis of the return distribution.