When do I take which distribution?

Abstract

For risk assessment and risk aggregation in enterprise risk management, describing the occurrence and impact of a risk through distributions is an important step.

We portray the distributions that are fundamental for enterprise risk management and describe when they can be used. These include the Bernoulli distribution, the binomial distribution, the Poisson distribution, the uniform distribution, the triangular distribution, the PERT distribution, the modified PERT distribution, the trapezoidal distribution, the custom distribution, the normal distribution, the lognormal distribution, the Weibull distribution and the compound distribution.

We show how the parameterisation of the distributions can be done via expert estimates or algorithmic calibration.

Keywords: Enterprise risk management, Bernoulli distribution, binomial distribution, Poisson distribution, uniform distribution, triangular distribution, PERT distribution, trapezoidal distribution, normal distribution, parameter calibration, expert estimation, Weibull distribution, modified PERT-distribution

JEL Classification: C01, C15,C87