Raising Value at Risk

In this paper I consider the properties for a coherent risk measure, outlined by Artzner et al. (1996), and relate these requirements to a well-known measure, value at risk (VaR), which attempts to evaluate economic risk. I show how the usual method of calculating VaR does not adhere to the coherency requirements and discuss the implications of such a result. As well, I discuss the use of the mean excess loss function to help solve this problem.