STATISTICS COLLOQUIUM
Qihe Tang, PhD
Professor, Director of Research
University of New South Wales
Business School
Insurance Risk Analysis of Financial Networks Vulnerable to a Shock
Abstract
We conduct a quantitative risk analysis of non-core insurance business of selling protection to financial firms against investment losses due to a shock. A static structural model is constructed, composed of a network of firms who cross-hold each other, multiple primitive assets that are vulnerable to a shock, and an insurer who resides external to the network and speculates in selling protection to the financial firms. Assume that each firm in the network is rational and able to decide how much protection to purchase to optimize its portfolio according to the meanvariance principle. As a result, the shock may impact on the insurer but indirectly through the network. More precisely, the network integration, which refers to the level of exposures of the firms to each other, aspects the way that the shock impacts on this non-core insurance business. Our study finds that the network integration and the shock play an interactive role in the insurance risk: An increase in the network integration can either reduce or amplify the impact of the shock on the insurance risk.
Bio: Dr. Qihe Tang joined the UNSW Business School as a Full Professor under the Strategic Hires and Retention Pathways (SHARP) scheme in July 2017.
After earning his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2001, he has worked at different places in the world including the University of Hong Kong (2001), the University of Amsterdam (2002-2004), the Concordia University (2004-2005), and the University of Iowa (2006-2017). At the University of Iowa, he was promoted to Full Professor in July 2012, and he was conferred the F. Wendell Miller Endowed Professorship in July 2014 in honour of his scholarly work and professional contributions.
Qihe Tang's expertise centers on extreme value theory for insurance, finance, and quantitative risk management. Recently, he has been working on various topics newly arising from the interdisciplinary area of insurance, finance, probability, and statistics. These topics include: (1) interplay of insurance and financial risks, (2) large credit portfolio losses, and (3) modeling, measuring, and managing catastrophe risks. His research on these topics has been constantly supported by external grants.
Qihe Tang has recently been elected as an editor for Insurance: Mathematics and Economics. Currently, he is also an associate editor for the journals TEST, Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, and Statistics & Probability Letters, and serves on the editorial boards of the journals Risks and Dependence Modeling. He has graduated a number of doctoral students who are now university professors all over the world.
For more information, contact: Tracy Burke at tracy.burke@uconn.edu