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Ken Seng Tan, University of Waterloo: Economic Pricing of Mortality-Linked Securities: A Tatonnement Approach

2012-09-11
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In previous research on pricing mortality-linked securities, the no-arbitrage approach is often used. However, this approach, which takes market prices as given, is difficult to implement in today's embryonic market where there are few traded securities. In this article, we tackle the pricing problem from a different angle by considering methods that are more related to fundamental economic concepts. Specifically, we treat the pricing work as a Walrasian tatonement process, in which prices are determined through a gradual calibration of supply and demand. Such a pricing framework provides a pair of supply and demand curves. From these curves we can determine if there will be any trade between the terparties, and if there will, at what price will the mortality-linked security be traded. We illustrate the proposed pricing framework with a hypothetical mortality-linked security and mortality data from the US pulation.