Macro Markets puts forward a unique and authoritative set of detailed proposals for establishing new markets for the management of the biggest economic risks facing society. Our existing financial markets are seen as being inadequate in dealing with such risks and Professor Shiller suggests major new markets as solutions to the problem. Shiller argues that although some risks, such as natural disaster or temporary unemployment, are shared by society, most risks are borne by the individual and standards of living determined by luck. He investigates whether a new technology of markets could make risk-sharing possible, and shows how new contracts could be designed to hedge all manner of risks to the individual's living standards. He proposes new international markets for perpetual claims on national incomes, and on components and aggregates of national incomes, concluding that these markets may well dwarf our stock markets in their activity and significance. He also argues for new liquid international markets for residential and commercial property. Establishing such unprecedented new markets presents some important technical problems which Shiller attempts to solve with proposals for implementing futures markets on perpetual claims on incomes, and for the construction of index numbers for cash settlement of risk management contracts. These new markets could fundamentally alter and diminish international economic fluctuations, and reduce the inequality of incomes around the world.

A complete guide to longevity finance As the Baby Boomer population continues to age and the need for the securitization of life insurance policies increases, more financial institutions are looking towards longevity trading as a solution. Consequently, there is now a need for innovative financial products and strategies that have the ability to hedge longevity exposure for pension funds, reinsurance companies, and governments. These products and strategies are currently being developed with the use of life settlements. Here, author Vishaal Bhuyan provides a complete guide to this burgeoning sector. In Life Markets, Bhuyan and a team of expert contributors from leading firms offer an extensive look at how to trade life settlements. Provides practical guidance to the growing field of longevity finance Outlines the innovative financial products that are populating this field Highlights a safe haven for investors seeking returns in troubled times Covering everything from the history of life settlements to making a transaction-pricing, service providers, exchanges, and more-this book contains extensive coverage of the many issues surrounding longevity finance.

By examining the rise of life insurance institutions in 18th-century England, this book offers fresh insight into the history of a commercial society learning to apply speculative techniques to the management of risk.

Many Americans believe that people who lack health insurance somehow get the care they really need. Care Without Coverage examines the real consequences for adults who lack health insurance. The study presents findings in the areas of prevention and screening, cancer, chronic illness, hospital-based care, and general health status. The committee looked at the consequences of being uninsured for people suffering from cancer, diabetes, HIV infection and AIDS, heart and kidney disease, mental illness, traumatic injuries, and heart attacks. It focused on the roughly 30 million-one in seven-working-age Americans without health insurance. This group does not include the population over 65 that is covered by Medicare or the nearly 10 million children who are uninsured in this country. The main findings of the report are that working-age Americans without health insurance are more likely to receive too little medical care and receive it too late; be sicker and die sooner; and receive poorer care when they are in the hospital, even for acute situations like a motor vehicle crash.

In What Money Can't Buy, renowned political philosopher Michael J. Sandel rethinks the role that markets and money should play in our society. Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we put a price on human life to decide how much pollution to allow? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons, auctioning admission to elite universities, or selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? In his New York Times bestseller What Money Can't Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes up one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets? Over recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. In Justice, an international bestseller, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can't Buy, he provokes a debate that's been missing in our market-driven age: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society, and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?