• Graduate Programs
  • Research
  • Browse our Courses
  • Events
    • Events Calendar
    • Events Archive
    • Summer School
      • Applied Public Policy Evaluation
      • Deep Learning
      • Development Economics
      • Economics of Blockchain and Digital Currencies
      • Economics of Climate Change
      • The Economics of Crime
      • Foundations of Machine Learning with Applications in Python
      • From Preference to Choice: The Economic Theory of Decision-Making
      • Inequalities in Health and Healthcare
      • Marketing Research with Purpose
      • Markets with Frictions
      • Modern Toolbox for Spatial and Functional Data
      • Sustainable Finance
      • Tuition Fees and Payment
      • Business Data Science Summer School Program
    • Tinbergen Institute Lectures
    • 2026 Tinbergen Institute Opening Conference
    • Annual Tinbergen Institute Conference
  • News
  • Summer School
    • Applied Public Policy Evaluation
    • Deep Learning
    • Development Economics
    • Economics of Blockchain and Digital Currencies
    • Economics of Climate Change
    • The Economics of Crime
    • Foundations of Machine Learning with Applications in Python
    • From Preference to Choice: The Economic Theory of Decision-Making
    • Inequalities in Health and Healthcare
    • Marketing Research with Purpose
    • Markets with Frictions
    • Modern Toolbox for Spatial and Functional Data
    • Sustainable Finance
    • Tuition Fees and Payment
  • Alumni

Dhaene, J., Laeven, R., Vanduffel, S., Darkiewicz, G. and Goovaerts, M. (2008). Can a coherent risk measure be too subadditive? The Journal of Risk and Insurance, 75(2):365--386.


  • Journal
    The Journal of Risk and Insurance

We consider the problem of determining appropriate solvency capital requirements for an insurance company or a financial institution. We demonstrate that the subadditivity condition that is often imposed on solvency capital principles can lead to the undesirable situation where the shortfall risk increases by a merger. We propose to complement the subadditivity condition by a regulator's condition. We find that for an explicitly specified confidence level, the Value-at-Risk satisfies the regulator's condition and is the 'most efficient' capital requirement in the sense that it minimizes some reasonable cost function. Within the class of concave distortion risk measures, of which the elements, in contrast to the Value-at-Risk, exhibit the subadditivity property, we find that, again for an explicitly specified confidence level, the Tail-Value-at-Risk is the optimal capital requirement satisfying the regulator's condition.