Three different measures were used to assess the robustness
of the risk reduction performance of the THI insurance contract:
MV, certainty-equivalent revenues (CERs), and value-at-risk
(VaR). MV is a widely used measure of relative risk and return
in many finance applications. It assumes that decision-makers
value investment results based only on the first two moments
of the distribution of returns. For a specified utility function,
CER is the level of return that if received with certainty would
generate a level of utility equal to the expected utility of the
risky investment. While it allows for consideration of higher
moments of the return distribution, CER also requires one to
make assumptions about the decision-maker’s utility function
over returns. VaR measures the minimum return (or maximum
loss) that would be expected from an investment with a given
probability. It is typically used when one believes that investors
are concerned primarily about downside risk (Markowitz, 1991;
Hogan and Warren, 1972).