A considerable number of equivalent formulas defining conditional value-at-risk and expected shortfall are gathered together. Then we present a simple method to bound the conditional value-at-risk of compound Poisson loss distributions under incomplete information about its severity distribution, which is assumed to have a known finite range, mean, and variance. This important class of nonnormal loss distributions finds applications in actuarial science, where it is able to model the aggregate claims of an insurance-risk business.
Based on the notions of value-at-risk and conditional value-at-risk, we consider two functionals, abbreviated VaR and CVaR, which represent the economic risk capital required to operate a risky business over some time period when only a small probability of loss is tolerated. These functionals are consistent with the risk preferences of profit-seeking (and risk averse) decision makers and preserve the stochastic dominance order (and the stop-loss order). This result is used to bound the VaR and CVaR functionals by determining their maximal values over the set of all loss and profit functions with fixed first few moments. The evaluation of CVaR for the aggregate loss of portfolios is also discussed. The results of VaR and CVaR calculations are illustrated and compared at some typical situations of general interest.
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