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Chapter 12 - Does Forgetting Make Markets? Historical Silence in the Political Risk Insurance Market

from Part III - Valuation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2024

By
Paul Robert Gilbert
Edited by
Susi Geiger ,
Katy Mason ,
Neil Pollock ,
Philip Roscoe ,
Annmarie Ryan ,
Stefan Schwarzkopf  and
Pascale Trompette
Susi Geiger
Affiliation:
University College Dublin
Katy Mason
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Neil Pollock
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Philip Roscoe
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
Annmarie Ryan
Affiliation:
University of Limerick
Stefan Schwarzkopf
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School
Pascale Trompette
Affiliation:
Université de Grenoble
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Summary

This chapter is concerned with understanding the history and operation of the market for political risk insurance, and the related political risk analysis industry that provides metrics, narratives and pricing prosthetics that are used by insurance brokers and underwriters when they negotiate terms and prices for the cover they provide. These prosthetics include a variety of colour-coded ‘heat’ maps, indices and geographical categorizations (such as ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’, ‘MENA’ [Middle East and North Africa] or ‘Asia-Pacific’), which do not determine the pricing of political risk insurance cover but, rather, act as ‘technologies of the imagination’ (Gilbert 2020a) and spur imaginative effects and particular approaches to valuation. As political risk insurance (PRI) brokers and underwriters would themselves argue, PRI does not lend itself to an actuarial mode that seeks to predict the likelihood of future ‘political risk events’ based on statistical tabulation of past occurrences.

Keywords

Valuationforgettingpolitical risk insuranceTrouillot
Type
Chapter
Information
Market Studies
Mapping, Theorizing and Impacting Market Action
 , pp. 194 - 208
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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