Purpose -Conventional wisdom states that catastrophe risk securities show no or little correlation with stock and bond markets, and offer significant attractions to investors providing a good diversification of risks. This study examines the correlation between catastrophe risk securities and portfolios of other equities by analyzing catastrophe effects on the Japanese stock market. Design/methodology/approach -Using catastrophe data from SwissRe Sigma publications and stock returns from the Pacific-Basin Capital Markets database, this paper analyzes stock and abnormal returns in the Japanese stock market using event study methodology. Findings -For the Japanese stock market as a whole, there is no significant catastrophe effect. The results indicate a significant negative correlation between catastrophe loss amount and the insurance industry's equity returns and abnormal returns, a significant positive correlation with the construction industry, but no significant correlation with the real estate industry. This paper also analyzes the impact of catastrophe causalities. The results show little evidence on the significance of these variables.Originality/value -This study provides important insights to the insurance/reinsurance industry in the Japanese risk market for catastrophe property and mortality risk securitization and to investors who are interested in further improvement of their portfolio risk/return profile by including catastrophe risk securities.

Underwriting and investment are two important and related business activities of insurance companies. However, studies on the interrelation between underwriting and investment risks of Property-Liability (P-L) insurance companies are sparse in the literature. Using a sample of US P-L insurers, this article conducts an empirical investigation of how these two risks are associated with each other in the 1994-2000 period (before the September 11th terrorist attack in 2001). Our results, robust to various estimations, suggest that there is no significant relationship between the underwriting and investment risks among our sample firms. Such results based on pre 9-11 event period provide some support for the conjecture of Achleitner et al. (Geneva Pap Risk Insur Issues Pract 27:275-282, 2002) that many insurance companies may have failed to take an integrated approach to risk management. This resulted in a heavy loss due to dual exposures in both underwriting and investment in the 9-11 event. In the aftermath of the recent global financial crisis, risk taking and risk management of financial institutions have received more attention and increasing scrutiny. We believe the current paper provides some useful insights in this vein.

Dividend decisions, Property–liability insurance, Mutual and stock insurers, Capital structure, Capital constraints, Agency theory, G22, G32, G35,