Asset liquidity and financial contracts: Evidence from aircraft leases

Financial contracting theories agree that more-liquid assets decrease the expected cost of external financing, thus making leasing more attractive and reducing lessors’ equilibrium return. However, the literature has ambiguous predictions about the effect of liquidity on the maturity of leases. These predictions are further complicated by the existence of two types of lease contracts—operating and capital—that differ in whether asset ownership transfers to the lessee at the end of the contract. Using data from commercial aircraft, I find that more-liquid assets (1) make leasing, operating leasing in particular, more likely; (2) have shorter operating leases; (3) have longer capital leases; and (4) command lower markups of operating lease rates.     

Das Transparenzgebot im Hinblick auf die Überschussermittlung und -beteiligung in der Lebensversicherung

The article deals with the legal requirements of transparency as they apply to general terms and conditions in life insurance policies. The analysis focuses especially on the principles formulated recently by the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) concerning contract clauses in life insurance policies that affect the calculation and the share of generated surplus funds. The recent jurisprudence of the Federal Court of Justice raises some basic questions of legal obligations of insurers to keep their general terms and conditions plain and understandable. Of particular concern is the relationship between the precept of transparency and statutory duties of insurers to furnish information to their customers. The conclusion is drawn that it is the exclusive role of the latter to oblige insurers to inform the customers about their objective legal position. The precept of transparency, however, does not create a legal duty to inform which is independent from the individual insurance contract. Further conclusions relate to the general reach of duties to inform, their application vis-à-vis the calculation and the share of surplus funds, the legal consequences that exist in case of their breach and the implications this may have on the reform process of the German Insurance Contract Act (WG). The article ends with the presentation of ten theses recalling briefly the considerations made in the course of the article.     

Expense preference behavior in mutual life insurers

The effect of alternative ownership structures, stock versus mutual, on the cost of production is studied for firms in the life insurance industry. The effect of differential incentives on the cost structure of both groups of firms is examined by means of a multiproduct cost function. This research shows that despite differences in legal form and incentives of managers, stock and mutual firms in the life insurance industry are similar in terms of the types of products sold, the average cost of production, and the form of the relationship between cost and production.Department of Finance, University of Connecticut     

Dynamic Insurance Contracts and Adverse Selection

We take a dynamic perspective on insurance markets under adverse selection and study a dynamic version of the Rothschild and Stiglitz model. We investigate the nature of dynamic insurance contracts by considering both conditional and unconditional dynamic contracts. An unconditional dynamic contract has insurance companies offering contracts where the terms of the contract depend on time, but not on the occurrence of past accidents. Conditional dynamic contracts make the actual contract also depend on individual past performance (such as in car insurances). We show that dynamic insurance contracts yield a welfare improvement only if they are conditional on past performance. With conditional contracts, the first‐best can be approximated if the contract lasts long. Moreover, this is true for any fraction of low‐risk agents in the population.     

A model of reserves, bank runs, and deposit insurance

A model is presented in which demand deposits backed by fractional currency reserves and public insurance can be beneficial. The model uses Samuelson's pure consumption-loans model. The case for demand deposits, reserves, and deposit insurance rests on costs of illiquidity and incomplete information. The effect of deposit insurance depends upon how, and at what cost, the government meets its insurer's obligation — something which is not specified in practice. It remains possible that demand deposits and deposit insurance are a distortion, and reserve requirements serve only to limit the size of this distortion.     

Disappointment and the Optimal Insurance Contract

This paper studies the optimal insurance contract under disappointment theory. We show that, when the individuals anticipate disappointment, there are two types of optimal insurance contract. The first type contains a deductible and a coinsurance above the deductible. We find that zero marginal cost is just a sufficient but not a necessary condition for a zero deductible. The second type has no deductible and the optimal insurance starts with full coverage for small losses and includes a coinsurance above an upper value of the full coverage.     

Contingent Commissions and the Management of the Independent Agency

Insurance agencies continue to exist as an important distribution mechanism because they give their contracting insurers advantages in risk selection and enable insurance applicants to transfer complex risks. While independent agencies are compensated by upfront commissions, a key component of their profitability is tied to contingent commissions. A contingency arrangement represents ex post compensation normally tied to underwriting profitability, volume, and annual growth. We report two actual contingency contracts in the context of a decision process for choosing among contingency offerings by insurers. We incorporate both uncertainty and correlation among key variables to arrive at values for competing contracts, then use a downside risk approach that helps agency owners select the better contract. The approach offered in this article is scalable to a selection problem for any number of contingency arrangements.     

Incentive problems in bank insider borrowing

Although bank insider abuses have been one of the most frequently cited causes of recent bank problems, the existing literature is surprisingly sparse in this area. The purpose of this article is to examine one element of insider abuse—the case of bank insider borrowing. In the context of the theory of financial intermediation, we propose a hypothesis that excessive insider borrowing creates substantial incentive problems and leads the bank to inferior performance. Our empirical analysis provides results consistent with this hypothesis. The policy implication of this article is that the regulatory agencies and especially the FDIC should carefully monitor banks with excessive insider borrowing to prevent an arbitrage against the insurance fund.     

降低保险公司营业费用的途径选择

营业费用居高不下是困扰我国寿险业发展的问题之一。寿险营业费用是保险费的重要组成部分 ,在保费的三大决定因素中是保险公司自身最可控的一个因素。本文从分析组成营业费用的三大费用即新合同费、合同维持费、收费费用出发 ,通过研究其各自对保费影响的权重 ,得出结论 :从降低合同维持费的途径来降低营业费用从而达至降低保险费的目的是最经济的。要降低合同维持费用 ,必须提高管理效率 ,改善IT系统 ,实现可持续开发     

Market structure and the efficiency of European insurance companies: A stochastic frontier analysis

This paper is motivated by the progressive liberalisation of the European insurance market in recent years. It uses stochastic frontier analysis to estimate Flexible Fourier cost functions for European insurance companies. Separate frontiers are estimated for life, non-life and composite companies. We adopt a maximum likelihood approach to estimation in which the variance of both one-sided and two-sided error terms is modelled jointly with the frontiers. This approach allows us to simultaneously control for the impact of heteroskedasticity on the estimation of scale economies as well as estimating the effect of firm size and market structure on X-inefficiency. The study draws on Standard & Poor’s Eurothesys data set of financial reports for the period 1995 to 2001. This provides technical and non-technical accounts at year-end for life, non-life and composite insurance businesses in 14 major European countries. Our estimates suggest that over this period most European insurers were operating under conditions of decreasing costs (increasing returns to scale), and that company size and domestic market share were significant factors determining X-inefficiency. Larger firms, and those with high market shares, tend to have higher levels of cost inefficiency.     

Controlling-minority shareholder incentive conflicts and directors’ and officers’ liability insurance: Evidence from China

This paper examines the demand for directors’ and officers’ liability insurance (D&O insurance) by Chinese listed companies where controlling-minority shareholder incentive conflicts are acute due to the concentrated and split ownership structure. We hypothesize and find evidence that the incidence of seeking D&O insurance is positively related to the extent of controlling-minority shareholder incentive conflicts – a finding not previously documented in the literature. Using an event study, we find that the announcements of D&O insurance decisions in firms that engage in earnings management, and/or are controlled by a local government (such firms tend to have stronger incentives to tunnel), seem to have a negative wealth effect. In addition, the incidence of the D&O insurance decision is positively related to the proportion of independent directors and several litigation risk proxies. Therefore, the breakthrough in corporate governance and judicial reforms has created non-negligible perceived securities litigation risks in China.     

The Spillover effect of compulsory insurance

The assumption usually made in the insurance literature that risks are always insurable at the desired level does not hold in the real world: some risks are not—or are only partially—insurable, while others, such as civil liability or health and workers' injuries, must be fully insured or at least covered for a specific amount. We examine in this paper conditions under which a reduction in the constrained level of insurance for one risk increases the demand of insurance for another independent risk. We show that it is necessary to sign the fourth derivative of the utility function to obtain an unambiguous spillover effect. Three different sufficient conditions are derived if the expected value of the exogenous risk is zero. The first condition is that risk aversion be standard—that is, that absolute risk aversion and absolute prudence be decreasing. The second condition is that absolute risk aversion be decreasing and convex. The third condition is that both the third and the fourth derivatives of the utility function be negative. If the expected value of the exogenous risk is positive, a wealth effect is added to the picture, which goes in the opposite direction if absolute risk aversion is decreasing.     

Do lack of transparency and enforcement undermine international risk-sharing?

This paper studies the extent to which poor institutions compromise risk-sharing. We model a multilateral organization as a social contract that provides insurance to members. Countries privately observe the realization of a performance variable with a verification cost that differs across countries, reflecting the “transparency” of institutions. When the level of transparency is exogenous, the optimal contract provides complete expected risk sharing across countries and states. Poor transparency and enforcement reduce consumption and result in insurance rationing. When a country can increase transparency endogenously, this generates an externality and moral hazard. We first characterize the outcome when the multilateral agency can influence members’ institutions by choosing the countries’ level of effort. Next we derive a tax/subsidy scheme that can induce countries to choose the socially optimal level. JEL Classification Numbers D8, F3 We are grateful to Biung-Ghi Ju, Ted Juhl, Donald Lien, Joseph Sicilian and Jianbo Zhang for helpful comments. We are especially grateful to an anonymous referee for comments that improved the paper substantially.     

An Efficiency-Based Approach to Determining Potential Cost Savings and Profit Targets for Health Insurers: The Case of Obamacare Health Insurance CO-OPs

This research analyzes the performance of the health insurance consumer-operated and -oriented plan (CO-OPs), examines their medical services and operating efficiency, proposes an efficiency-based goal-oriented approach for cost reductions, profit targets, premium changes, and government subsidies, and provides an important guide for improvement potentials for both the CO-OP health insurance model and other health insurers. The CO-OPs are not satisfactory in the medical services efficiency, and they are much less efficient compared with other insurers. Potential cost reductions are significant using various (conservative) efficiency goals. Most CO-OPs suffer underwriting losses, as do many other insurers; a few CO-OPs are much more operating efficient than other insurers, but all CO-OPs need significant improvement of financial performance relative to benchmark insurers. Incorporating potential cost reductions, many CO-OPs would barely require any “premium changes and government subsidies,” and they are even capable of paying back the federal loans. With both potential cost reductions and premium increases, more CO-OPs would not need any help from the government but survive on their own. This research informs public debates and all stakeholders (including management, consumers, regulators, policymakers) of improvement potentials to be considered for related decision making besides other factors including the political environment and government policies.     

A Capital Budgeting Analysis of Life Insurance Costs in the United States: 1950–1979

A capital budgeting procedure is applied in developing a real price index for life insurance over three decades. Individual life policies of three types are analyzed. The analysis reveals that although the cost of whole life insurance, measured in nominal values, has decreased over the past thirty years, when properly measured in present value or constant dollar terms, the cost has risen substantially. Term life insurance has been characterized by decreasing costs in both nominal and real terms. The amounts of the cost variations attributable to improving survival rates, changing policy terms, varying discount rates and differing tax status are identified.     

Das deutsche und Schweizer Krankenversicherungssystem: Kosten,Leistungen und Anreizwirkungen aus Sicht der Versicherten

In the last years changes in the financing and in the service catalogue of the German health insurance system have been intensively discussed. The problematic incentive structures regarding the behaviour of the insured are frequently mentioned in these discussions. In particular, German insured have only little interest in a cost-efficient treatment of illness. At the same time the Swiss health insurance system is an example in which the insured show a higher cost consciousness. In the following article, the health insurance systems of Germany and Switzerland are compared from the perspective of the insured on the basis of the information-economic terms “moral hazard” and “adverse selection.” We find that both systems can learn from each other in reducing incentive problems.     

The Quality of Insurance Intermediary Services—Empirical Evidence for Germany

Competing insurance intermediaries provide heterogeneous services that are difficult for incompletely informed consumers to assess. Transaction cost economics, search theory, and principal‐agent theory provide arguments on product quality differences between exclusive agents and independent intermediaries. This article uses a sample of 927 insurance intermediaries in Germany. By performing OLS estimations, we test the impact of the different distribution channels and other factors on intermediaries’ service quality. Depending on the proxies used for service quality, we find mixed evidence for the product quality hypothesis. Service quality depends to a large extent on the information‐gathering and processing activities of the individual intermediaries, independent of the respective distribution channel.     

RELATIVE EFFICIENCIES OF NON-LIFE REINSURANCE MARKETING METHODS

Abstract: This paper extends the study of the relative cost efficiency of insurance delivery systems from the primary market to the market for non-life reinsurance services. As in the primary market for insurance services there are two predominant methods of marketing reinsurance services: reinsurers who rely on employees, termed direct writers, and those who rely on brokers.
An extensive literature relating to the primary market for non-life insurance consistently indicates that independent agency insurers have a cost disadvantage relative to exclusive agency insurers. This literature also suggests that independent agency insurers may supply superior service but a continuing erosion of the market share of independent agency insurers suggests that the perceived service differential is not valued sufficiently to offset the perceived cost differential.
The authors find evidence that, cet. par., broker supplied reinsurers operate with lower costs than direct reinsurers but we find less convincing evidence of a service differential favoring direct reinsurers. More significantly, we observe that the largest component of the traditional measure of the reinsurer's cost is the commission paid back to the primary insurer: the seemingly lower cost brokers provide a higher net cost product. Yet brokers thrive in the marketplace suggesting the existence of a product differentiated by service or quality. With the important caveat that measures of service are imperfect and data is limited, we find no evidence of a service differential.     

Contracting with Present-Biased Consumers in Insurance Markets

Present bias challenges consumers with self-control problems when they implement precautionary efforts in insurance markets. To explore how rational insurance companies respond to this bias, this paper analyzes a contract design problem in a monopolistic insurance market with ex ante moral hazard. We consider two types of consumers with this bias: the “naifs”, who do not foresee the present bias and make decisions in a myopic way, and the “sophisticates”, who foresee the bias and incorporate it in the decision process. Relative to the benchmark case where consumers are time-consistent, we show that (i) present bias reduces the monopoly profit, regardless of the consumer type; (ii) present bias can either reduce or increase the coverage of the profit-maximizing insurance contract depending on the extent of the bias; and (iii) when present bias is severe, the insurance company can profitably exploit naifs but not sophisticates. These results still hold when consumers are heterogeneous and their types are unknown to the insurance company.