Economic Catastrophe Bonds
指出资产定价的核心是证券的支付分布和状态价格，许多投资者只关注预期支付（如信用评级）而忽略违约发生的经济状态，因此容易被经济灾难债券吸引；文章证明许多结构化金融工具可归类为经济灾难债券，但提供的补偿远低于具有类似支付特征的替代品。
The central insight of asset pricing is that a security's value depends both on its distribution of payoffs across economic states and on state prices. In fixed income markets, many investors focus exclusively on estimates of expected payoffs, such as credit ratings, without considering the state of the economy in which default occurs. Such investors are likely to be attracted to securities whose payoffs resemble economic catastrophe bonds—bonds that default only under severe economic conditions. We show that many structured finance instruments can be characterized as economic catastrophe bonds, but offer far less compensation than alternatives with comparable payoff profiles.