The Value of Risk

This book explains how today's insurance industry developed and highlights the role of the reinsurance industry in spreading risks globally. The book examines the development of insurance markets and of the reinsurance industry in particular, and the history of Swiss Re, one of the leading reinsurance companies in the world.

Harold James, Claude and Lore Kelly Professor in European Studies; Professor of History and International Affairs; Director, Program in Contemporary European Politics and Society, University of Princeton,Peter Borscheid, Professor Emeritus of Economic and Social History, Philipps-University of Marburg,David Gugerli, Professor for the History of Technology, Institute for History, ETH Zurich,Tobias Straumann, Lecturer, University of Zurich

Harold James is Professor of History and International Affairs in the Princeton University, and studies economic and financial history and modern European history. His books include The End of Globalization (2001); Family Capitalism: Wendels, Haniels and Falcks (2006); The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle (2009); and Making the European Monetary Union (2012). In 2004 he was awarded the Helmut Schmidt Prize for Economic History, and in 2005 the Ludwig Erhard Prize for writing about economics. He is also Marie Curie Visiting Professor at the European University Institute, and writes regularly for Project Syndicate.


Peter Borscheid is Professor Emeritus of Economic and Social History at the University of Marburg. He has published numerous monographs on the history of science and technology, the history of the textile industry, the standard of living, the history of old age and old-age pension, the cultural history of acceleration. He led several projects and international working groups on insurance history. He also served as a member of the German government commission "The situation of the older generation in the Federal Republic of Germany". He is co-editor of World Insurance (2011, OUP).


David Gugerli is a Professor of History at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences of the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. His main interest is in the history of technology and science, social and economic history and cultural history. His recent publications include Transforming the Future - ETH Zurich and the Construction of Modern Switzerland 1855-2005 (2010) and The World as a Database: On the Relation of Software Development (2012). He is the editor of Interferenzen. Studien zur Kulturgeschichte der Technik (18 volumes) 1999-present.


Tobias Straumann is Lecturer in the History Department of the University of Zurich and the Economics Department of the University of Basel. He studied at the Universities of Bielefeld and Zurich and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. After a career in economic journalism, he was a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley and lecturer at the University of Lausanne. Dr. Straumann has worked in the fields of Swiss business history and European financial and monetary history. He has published articles in the Journal of Contemporary History, the European Review of Economic History, and the Historische Zeitschrift. His latest book is Fixed Ideas: Small States and Exchange Rate Regimes in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge University Press).