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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 ...
Conference Paper
The solvency of the insurance industry
Journal Article
The capitalization and portfolio risk of insurance companies
The strategies of financial intermediaries in the United States presumed a stability of interest rates that began to break down in the late 1960s. Not only did rising interest rates during the past two decades tend to depress the value of the assets of all intermediaries, they also fostered competition among intermediaries as all sought new opportunities for profit. In order to cope, many financial institutions assumed new bets by "reaching" for riskier assets offering higher yields or by operating with less capital per dollar of assets. To varying degrees, many insurance companies have ...
Conference Paper
The insurance industry: a view from the investment community
Conference Paper
The structure and regulation of insurance markets in Europe