Universities-Research Conference on insurance markets and catastrophe risk.

• Position: Conferences - Conference news

The NBER held a Universities Research Conference in Cambridge on "Insurance Markets and Catastrophe Risk" on May 11 and 12, 2012. NBER Research Associates Kenneth Froot of Harvard Business School and Howard Kunreuther of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and Erwann Michel-Kerjan, also of the Wharton School, organized the conference and chose these papers for discussion:

* Dwight Jaffee, University of California at Berkeley, and Thomas Russell, Santa Clara University, "The Welfare Economics of Catastrophic Loss"

* Antony Millner, University of California at Berkeley, "On Welfare Frameworks and Catastrophic Climate Risks"

* Emek Basker, University of Missouri, and Javier Miranda, Bureau of the Census, "Taken by Storm: Business Survival in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina"

* Tatyana Deryugina, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "The Role of Transfer Payments in Mitigating Shocks: Evidence from the Impact of Hurricanes"

* Jing Cai, University of California, Berkeley, "Social Networks and the Decision to Insure: Evidence from Randomized Experiments in China"

* Shawn A. Cole, Harvard University; Xavier Gine, The World Bank; and James Vickery, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, "How Does Risk Management Influence Production Decisions ? Evidence from a Field Experiment"

* Raghav Gaiha, University of Delhi; Kenneth Hill, Harvard University; and Ganesh Thapa, International Fund for Agricultural Development "Have Natural Disasters Become Deadlier?"

* Enrico Biffis, Imperial...