Price dispersion in the private health insurance industry: The case of Catalonia

This paper presents a vertical and horizontal product differentiation model that explains price dispersion among different kinds of health care insurance firms. Our model shows large insurance firms engaging in price competition with small mutual organizations that serve only a local area and charge lower premiums. We found that, although the market allows the entry of an excessive number of firms, the presence of local insurance companies increases social welfare by increasing the range of products available to consumers. Our conclusions are applicable to OECD countries in general although we rely on Catalonia's data.     

出力不确定下基于保险机制的风电供应链 最优交易决策

随着新一轮电力体制改革的日益推进,参与电力市场竞争是消纳风电等可再生能源的必经之路。由于风电出力受风速等自然条件影响,出力具有较强不确定性,导致其实际出力难以预测,使得风电商参与电力市场面临巨大的收益风险。合理地转移风电商的市场风险,引入有效的风险规避机制,对提高风电商收益稳定性具有重要意义。因此本文基于电量损失保险机制,建立了风电商、售电公司以及保险公司的Stackelberg博弈模型,通过逆向递归法求解纳什均衡,分析保险费率与市场三方利润之间的关系,得出市场主体风电商、售电公司以及保险公司的最优交易决策。最后通过具体算例分析验证得出,引入电量保险机制,制定适当的保险费率,能够使风电商、售电公司以及保险公司三方利益实现共赢。     

保险产业市场结构和市场绩效的关系研究

对于市场结构和市场绩效的关系问题,理论界存在两个较为权威的假说,即市场力量假说和效率结构假说。笔者通过实证分析检验这两个假说在我国保险市场中的适用性,认为在我国保险市场存在传统的市场结构—市场行为—市场绩效假说,保险市场可以通过增加有效率企业的数量,引入竞争机制,最终通过市场自然选择的过程,形成少数新的规模大并能够具有市场力量的保险公司,从而提高保险业的绩效水平。     

Choice, price competition and complexity in markets for health insurance

The United States and other nations rely on consumer choice and price competition between competing health plans to allocate resources in the health sector. While a great deal of research has examined the efficiency consequences of adverse selection in health insurance markets, less attention has been devoted to other aspects of consumer choice. The nation of Switzerland offers a unique opportunity to study price competition in health insurance markets. Switzerland regulates health insurance markets with the aim of minimizing adverse selection and encouraging strong price competition. We examine consumer responses to price differences in local markets and the degree of price variation in local markets. Using both survey data and observations on local markets we obtain evidence suggesting that as the number of choices offered to individuals grows, their willingness to switch plans given a set of price dispersion differences declines, which allows large price differences for relatively homogeneous products to persist. We consider explanations for this phenomenon from economics and psychology.     

保险保障基金制度效应分析——基于中国财险产业组织视角的研究

文章运用中国16家财险公司1999-2007年的面板数据,考察财险产业组织规律及保险保障基金制度对财险产业组织的影响,结果显示,中国财险业的市场结构与竞争行为正相关,市场结构与绩效正相关,竞争行为与绩效负相关;保险保障基金提取额与市场结构正相关,与竞争行为正相关,与绩效负相关.文章为了体现保险保障基金制度从隐性制度到显性制度的转变,将样本期间分为两阶段,尽管分阶段估计结果发生了一些变化,但并未改变基本结论.     

The politics of redistributive social insurance

This paper analyses the political support for a social insurance that includes elements of redistribution when there exists an imperfect private insurance alternative. Individuals differ both in their income and risk. The social insurance is compulsory and charges an income-related contribution with pooling of risks. The private insurance is voluntary and charges a contribution based on individual risks. However due to the adverse selection problem, private insurance companies provide only partial insurance. Adopting a non-expected utility model, we show that there is a general majority support for social insurance and that this support is increasing with risk aversion. We also show that a mixed insurance is politically impossible, regardless of the degree of redistribution of social insurance and the joint distribution of risk and income in the population. Lastly, we analyse how the political support for social insurance is affected by any change in its redistributive component and the possibility of using genetic tests.     

The Premium–Dividend Competition in the Prewar Japanese Life Insurance Industry: A Game-Theoretic Interpretation

Between 1917 and 1935, Japanese life insurance companies competed with each other on a premium–dividend basis. We propose that such competition took the form of product differentiation, exploiting differences in discount rates or price expectations among policy-holders. Our model shows that under some conditions the introduction of such competition can be beneficial to the competitive companies. It is shown that these conditions were satisfied at that time, and that more detailed factors are also consistent with the model.
JEL Classification Numbers: C72, D43, G22, N25.     

Deposit insurance and bank regulation in a monetary economy: a general equilibrium exposition

Summary. It is commonly argued that poorly designed banking system safety nets are largely to blame for the frequency and severity of modern banking crises. For example, underpriced deposit insurance and/or low reserve requirements are often viewed as factors that encourage risk-taking by banks. In this paper, we study the effects of three policy variables: deposit insurance premia, reserve requirements and the way in which the costs of bank bailouts are financed. We show that when deposit insurance premia are low, the monetization of bank bailout costs may not be more inflationary than financing these costs out of general revenue. This is because, while monetizing the costs increases the inflation tax rate, higher levels of general taxation reduce savings, deposits, bank reserves, and the inflation tax base. Increasing the inflation tax rate obviously raises inflation, but so does an erosion of the inflation tax base. We also find that low deposit insurance premia or low reserve requirements may not be associated with a high rate of bank failure.Received: 2 January 2002, Revised: 1 March 2003JEL Classification Numbers: D5, E5, G1.B. D. Smith: Sadly, our co-author, colleague and dear friend, Bruce D. Smith, died on July 9, 2002.     

Optimal Regulation of a Fully Insured Deposit Banking System

We analyze risk sensitive incentive compatible deposit insurance in the presence of private information when the market value of deposit insurance can be determined using Merton's (1977, 3-11) formula. We show that, under the assumption that transferring funds from taxpayers to financial institutions has a social cost, the optimal regulation combines different levels of capital requirements combined with decreasing premia on deposit insurance. On the other hand, it is never efficient to require the banks to hold riskless assets. Finally, chartering banks is necessary in order to decrease the cost of asymmetric information.     

我国健康保险有效需求的实证分析

有效保险需求是在当前特定时期内,在一定保险价格、一定购买力条件下现实的保险需求,是保险公司真正面对的业务来源。本文使用最近几年健康保险保费收入、城镇居民可支配收入、城镇基本医疗保险基金总收入及居民医疗保健支出等数据,通过建立回归模型对健康保险有效需求进行分析。结果显示：居民购买力和医疗费用的增长对我国健康保险的有效需求有显著影响,社会保险并未对商业健康保险产生替代作用,相反与健康保险保费收入同向增长。     

异质机构、企业性质与自主创新

本文通过放松经理人市场的完全竞争性假定,拓展了经典职业生涯模型,藉此研究了中国制度背景下的机构持股、企业性质与企业创新的关系,并基于2004—2009年923家上市公司的数据,从R&D投入和专利申请两个维度对本文拓展模型的命题进行了实证检验。结果表明:(1)异质机构对企业创新有不同的影响,证券投资基金对企业创新有显著的负效应,这种负效应在国有企业中表现得更为明显;(2)民营企业中机构投资者持股促进了企业的创新活动,国有企业中机构投资者持股与企业创新呈显著的负相关关系;(3)机构投资者整体持股对全样本企业的专利申请有不显著的正效应,而对R&D投入则有显著的负效应。     

中国外资财险企业市场竞争力问题研究

为衡量入世后在中国的外资财险企业的竞争力情况,本文借鉴经典产业组织理论的SCP范式和数据包络分析方法,运用2004-2011年的相关数据,以中国财险业市场结构和生产效率的变化情况为基础,总结其他学者参数设计的利弊,经实证研究发现当前中国财险业市场结构正由寡头垄断型向垄断竞争型优化；财险业尽管实现了全要素生产率连年净增长,但该指标的变化趋势是向下的,而外资公司整体上无论是追赶效应还是前沿面移动效应都优于中资公司,中资仅剩下规模上先占的相对优势.     

Do Competing Health Insurance Licensors Provide Pro-patient Effects?

This paper shows that competition among health insurance licensors has strong pro-patient effects, if inter-regulatory competition is allowed. The pro-patient effects of the competition among health insurance licensors do not depend on the need for the patients to form or exercise their political influence, such as, forming cooperatives or voting, as suggested by Backer's pressure group theory. When inter-jurisdictional transactions are allowed, endogenous policy making ensures that the health care licensors pursue public interests at no costs to patients.     

寿险公司资产负债管理技术的应用研究--动态资产负债管理的视角

资产负债管理是抵御利率变动对寿险公司经营的一种有效的方法,但如何将资产负债管理具体化到日常的财务控制工作中来,并建立具体的资产负债管理的评价指标和信息系统,寿险公司尚无实践的经验.本文以动态资产负债表为切入点,研究了寿险公司日常管理活动中,资产负债管理的技术和方法的应用,以资产份额分析法为例,分析了寿险公司动态资产负债管理的过程,对寿险公司引进资产负债管理有一定的实践意义.     

Change, consolidation, and competition in health care markets.

The health care industry is being transformed. Large firms are merging and acquiring other firms. Alliances and contractual relations between players in this market are shifting rapidly. Within the next few years, many markets are predicted to be dominated by a few large firms. Antitrust enforcement authorities like the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, as well as courts and legislators at both the federal and state levels, are struggling with the implications of these changes for the nature and consequences of competition in health care markets. In this paper we summarize the nature of the changes in the structure of the health care industry. We focus on the markets for health insurance, hospital services, and physician services. We then discuss the potential implications of the restructuring of the health care industry for competition, efficiency, and public policy. As will become apparent, this area offers a number of intriguing questions for inquisitive researchers.     

Health insurance and labor market outcomes: Joint decision-making within households

Most Americans obtain access to health insurance through an employer. In this paper, we ask how the link between health insurance and employment affects labor market choices such as whether to work full-time. To understand the effect of the incentives embedded in the employer-based insurance system, we study the joint decision-making of husbands and wives that determines the household's access to health insurance. We estimate the effect on a wife's (husband's) labor market outcomes of husband's (wife's) health insurance, allowing the health insurance of both spouses to be endogenous. Obtaining unbiased estimates of such effects is complicated by the likelihood that positive assortative mating creates correlations between a couple's characteristics and the possibility that there are important unobservable household income effects. Our innovation is to measure these biases by examining a second fringe benefit, paid sick leave, in addition to health insurance. We find that, as predicted, spouse's insurance has statistically significant negative effects on being offered own employer insurance as well as on the probability of working full-time with health insurance.     

Culture,financial crisis and the demand for property,accident and health insurance in the OECD countries

Culture has been known to play an important role in explaining differences in consumption behaviour across countries. Yet, we know very little how it affects spending on non-life insurance products. This paper attempts to shed some light on how cultural characteristics impact the demand for property, accident and health insurance, focusing on the OECD countries in the period 2000–2017. We find, via the system generalized method of moment estimations, that cultural characteristics such as individualism, long-term orientation, masculinity and uncertainty avoidance were the drivers of the expenditure on property insurance, whereas long-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance and hypometropia explained accident and health insurance spending across the OECD countries. In the presence of the global financial crisis, cultural effects on property insurance spending turned out to be relatively minor, with the exception of individualism. These findings provide valuable information for non-life insurance companies, consumers and policy makers in the OECD countries.     

Modelling risk premia in CO2 allowances spot and futures prices

This article analyzes the modelling of risk premia in CO₂ allowances spot and futures prices, valid for compliance under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). Similarly to electricity markets, a salient characteristic of CO₂ allowances is that the theory of storage does not hold, as CO₂ allowances only exist on the balance sheets of companies regulated by the scheme. The main result features positive time-varying risk premia in CO₂ spot and futures prices, which are strictly higher for post-2012 contracts (€6–9/ton of CO₂) than for Phase II contracts (€0–6/ton of CO₂). Contrary to Benth et al.'s (2008) for electricity markets, a positive relationship between risk premia and time-to-maturity is found in the EU ETS. As for relative differences between CO₂ futures and spot prices, CO₂ futures traded between + 1% (December 2008 contract) and + 33% (December 2014 contract) above spot prices during February 2008–April 2009. Contrary to Bessembinder and Lemmon (2002) for the electricity market, a positive relationship between risk premia and the variance/skewness of CO₂ spot prices is found. The futures-spot bias to the EU ETS explains around 1–6% of the variance of CO₂ futures premia.     

论全面风险管理对保险公司价值的影响

全面风险管理(Enterprise Risk Management,ERM)是一种最新的风险管理框架.它鼓励企业将风险进行整合,利用高度统一的方法来管理企业面临的所有风险.随着各个保险公司的风险意识的增强和监管部门对全面风险管理规定的出台,全面风险管理已经逐渐被保险公司的高层接受,并在公司内部开展不同形式的全面风险管理活动.本文针对目前保险公司开展全面风险管理活动的情况,分析了全面风险管理活动对保险公司价值的潜在影响,发现在全面风险管理选择模型中,企业规模与全面风险管理的使用成正相关.本文使用全面风险管理指示变量和其他一系列变量来考察全面风险管理使用与企业价值之间的内在关联,结果发现两者在统计和经济意义上存在着显著的正向关系