This page lists some web sites that relate to
innovations in finance that appear to
have the possibility of creating real social value, that promise to make our world a
more stable and prosperous environment for all of us. Insurance,
public finance, and sources of background information are included. The choice of web sites
follows the sense of important financial innovation that was described in my book
On May 22, 2006 the Chicago Mercantile Exchange with the collaboration of MacroMarkets LLC launched futures and options contracts on U.S. home prices for ten U.S. cities and for a U.S. aggregate. The contracts are cash settled based on the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices that Karl E. Case and I originally pioneered, and that are now produced by Fiserv Inc. with the collaboration of Standard & Poor's.
Hedgestreet, launched in 2004, is a trading platform that gives online investors the opportunity to trade innovative financial instruments based on economic risks in their daily lives, thereby allowing people to hedge the outcomes of everyday uncertainties.
City Index created futures markets on UK home prices in October, 2001.
IG Index created a similar service in 2002.
Longitude, Inc. offers a Parimutuel Digital Call Auction platform for trading of options.
The American Stock Exchange has been an important innovator, with ETFs, HOLDRs, TIERS, RANGERs and other new products.
The Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have been important innovators in expanding the scope of risk management. The The Chicago Climate Exchange has important functions in managing environmental risks.
Opt4 Derivatives offers an electronic trading platform for customized derivatives.
Advanced e-Financial Technologies, Inc. is producing futures markets for real estate
Volitional Partners proposes a Proprietary Platform the allows projects and tasks within a company to be owned jointly by the company and the employees.
The Alice Corporation has a trading platform for all sorts of quantifiable risks.
The Iowa Electronic Markets,at the University of Iowa, starting in 1988, pioneered futures contracts that pay off on future economic and political events.
Macro Securities Research, LLC is a financial services company that illiquid economic interests into publicly tradable securities. The company was founded by Allan Weiss, Sam Masucci, and Robert Shiller
Bulgaria's GDP Linked debt 1993 was an important model for macro risk management.
Michelin received a loan with a GDP trigger, 2000
New Singapore Shares are shares in Singapore GDP granted by the Singapore government to its citizens.
The Economics Derivatives Market uses Longitude technology to facilitate the trading of a large variety of economic indexes. This market is sponsored by Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.
A paper by Ricardo Caballero "Coping with Chile's External Vulnerability: A Financial Problem," MIT, 2001, advocates Chilean sovereign debt indexed to copper prices, which are a major risk for the Chilean economy.
A newspaper article advocating GDP-linked debt for Argentina by Martin Varsavsky and Miguel Braun, in La Nacion, February 4, 2002. A proposal for GDP-linked Argentina national debt was made at the 2003 Dubai IMF Meetings by Argentina. See under presentations, "Argentina's Restructuring Guidelines," by Secretary of Finance Guillermo Nielson, September 2003, pp. 24-5.
The Special Summit of the Americas in Monterrey Mexico, a meeting in January 2004 of the heads of state of 34 countries in the western hemisphere, offered support for GDP-Indexed bonds in their Declaration of Nuevo Leon: "We suport the efforts of borrowing countries to work with the private sector to explore new approaches to reduce the burden of debt service during periods of economic downturns." page 3, and “We take note with satisfaction that governments in the Hemisphere are implementing the Monterrey Consensus by exploring innovative ways to mobilize financing for private and public investment and to strengthen debt management by considering financial instruments, such as growth-indexed bonds and others, to promote macroeconomic stability and reduce financial vulnerability.” p. 11.
The Cusco Proposals , advanced as part of the Consensus of Cusco, which was adopted by the heads of state and government of the Permanent Mechanism for Political Consultation and Consensus (Rio Group) at their 17th Summit Meeting in the city of Cusco, Peru, on May 23 and 24 of 2004 asserted that: "We also urge the international financial agencies to continue exploring flexible and agile economic and financial mechanisms in order to increase and make available, on a timely basis, the resources needed to promote our countries' economic and social development, particularly the Heavily-Indebted Poor Countries Initiative and other similar tools."
Ronnie Horesh, has proposed Social Policy Bonds to provide market incentives for national objectives.
The Swedish Social Security System is based on a formula that ties its payouts to growth in GDP.
Skandia Corporations's Competence Insurance and the Swedish government's Individual Learning Accounts and the United Kingdom government's Individual Learning Accounts are used to finance and subsidize the development of human capital in ways that account for the uncertainty of opportunities for such developent.
Clean air markets at the Chicago Board of Trade allow trading of sulfur dioxide emissions in the United States.
The Institute for Environmental Security seeks to develop incentive systems for the sustainable delivery of environmental goods and services, stimulating market and/or treaty based investment programs.
William Sharpe's Financial Engines web site offers a personal asset manager allowing people to make better risk management decisions.
Laurence Kotlikoff and Jegadeesh Gokhale's ESPlanner offers financial planning software that is strong on life-cycle calculations.
Ron Dembo's Algorithmics, Inc. in Toronto, Canada, offers software that facilitates integrated risk management for businesses, using a "Mark to the Future" paradigm.
Riskmetrics Group has web-delivered models that stress-tests investor portfolios, including Wealthbench for individual investors.
Macro Financial Risk Corporation provides analysis of risk transmission among every major sector of a national economy: corporations, banks, government.
Erivatives.com is a global information group related to capital market activity and derivatives. It is linked to appliederivatives.com which carries editorials and news about innovations in risk management.
IndexUniverse.com provides information about the world of indexed securities.
The Home Equity Assurance Program was set up in Oak Park Illinois in 1977 to protect homeowners against the risk of declines in the prices of their homes. This pathbreaking program was created by a village ordinance and a brochure that explained the program to residents.
The Southwest Home Equity Assurance Program was set up in 1988 in Chicago in imitation of the Oak Park Program.
The Syracuse Home Equity Protection Program offers homeowners insurance policies against the decline in value of an index of Syracuse home prices. Rep. Jim Walsh issued a press release describing this program in July 2002.Other such programs exist in Aurora Illinois, Northwest Chicago, Patterson Park/Baltimore Maryland, Ferguson Missouri, Florissant Missouri, and Pittsburgh PA.
Real Liquidity LLC of Washington DC is developing three products, house price insurance, real estate futures and an equity release annuity.
The Summary of Findings for the Prime Ministerial Task Force on Homeownership from Australia analyzes the possibility of creating housing partnerships whereby homeowners could sell a portion of their home to investors, and thereby help diversify their portfolios better.In May 2003 Goldman Sachs created options (warrants and certificates) on both UK home prices and Greater London home prices, with an expiration date in 2004. These options are cash settled based on the Halifax House Price Indexes.
French inflation indexed bonds were issued by Agence France Tresor starting 1998. They now also issue indexed bonds linked to a eurozone price index.
Australia's Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) allows students to borrow money whose repayment is indexed to their subsequent income.
A private company offers a similar program in the US: MyRichUncle.com.
The Yale Law School has a Career Options Assistance Program (COAP)
Paypal.com (founded 1998),Yaga.com (founded 2000), Peppercoin.com (founded 2001) and Bitpass.com (founded 2002) support micropayment systems that allow businesses to sell very low cost items online. Such systems have potential to increase the scope and diversity of products offered and increase the opportunity for innovation in our economic system.
AES Prodata has installed the world's first comprehensive contactless smartcard electronic money system in Hong Kong, called the
Octopus Card system. It was designed to be used to allow payment of mass transit fares, purchases from 7-Eleven stores and McDonalds
without even handling a credit card: the system can make a payment from an Octopus card in a purse or wallet.
The Progressive Casualty Insurance Compay, Mayfield Village, Ohio, has patented automobile insurance policies whose rates are determined by the places and times the automobile is driven, as determined by a global positioning system. U. S. Patent No. 5,797,134. Norwich Union has a similar experiment underway in Britain.
Swiss Re New Markets customizes reinsurance and capital markets solutions to manage business's risks.
Enron Corporation was an important financial innovator. Unfortunately, its innovations were overshadowed by serious ethical lapses on the part of some in top management, lapses that led ultimately to the destruction of the firm. See Enron Chronology
The Cash Management Account (CMA) No. 4,774,663 of Merrill Lynch was one of the first successful financial patents, 1988.
A system for Enhanced Management of Pension-Backed Credit, No.5,206,803 was developed by Francis Vitagliano and Franco Modigliani to allow people to draw on their pension balances on their credit cards.
A motor vehicle monitoring system for determining cost of insurance No. 5,797,134 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, 1998.
Macro securities (proxy assets) No. 5,987,435 (proxy assets) were invented by Allan Weiss and me, and the patent is managed by Macro Security Research LLC. See also our follow-on patent No. 6,513,020.
Association for Investment Management and Research (AIMR)
International Swaps and Derivatives Association
Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP)
International Association of Financial Engineers (IAFE)
Alternative Investment Management Association
Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association
Robert J. Shiller
Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics
International Center for Finance
Yale University
30 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511
robert.shiller@yale.edu