Search Results
Journal Article
Banks selling insurance: Risky business?
Working Paper
Consolidation and efficiency in the U.S. life insurance industry
This paper examines the relationship between mergers and acquisitions, efficiency, and scale economies in the U.S. life insurance industry. We estimate cost and revenue efficiency over the period 1988-1995 using data envelopment analysis (DEA). The Malmquist methodology is used to measure changes in efficiency over time. We find that acquired firms achieve greater efficiency gains than firms that have not been involved in mergers or acquisitions. Firms operating with nondecreasing returns to scale and financially vulnerable firms are more likely to be acquisition targets. Overall, mergers and ...
Conference Paper
Public policy and life insurance
Working Paper
Organizational form and efficiency: an analysis of stock and mutual property-liability insurers
This paper analyzes the efficiency of stock and mutual organizational forms in the property-liability insurance industry using nonparametric frontier efficiency methods. We test the managerial discretion hypothesis, which predicts that the market will sort organizational forms into market segments where they have comparative advantages in minimizing the costs of production, including agency costs. Both production and cost frontiers are estimated. The results indicate that stocks and mutuals are operating on separate production and cost frontiers and thus represent distinct technologies. The ...
Journal Article
Capital from an insurance company perspective
This paper was presented at the conference "Financial services at the crossroads: capital regulation in the twenty-first century" as part of session 5, "International capital allocation at financial institutions." The conference, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on February 26-27, 1998, was designed to encourage a consensus between the public and private sectors on an agenda for capital regulation in the new century.
Conference Paper
The structure and regulation of insurance markets in Europe