A Growth Theory for the Insurance Industry

Insurance economics models of statics and comparative statics assume that the process of economic adjustment must inevitably lead to equilibrium. The question of attainability of equilibrium has not been addressed so far. This is the domain of dynamic analysis. In this article, we develop a model of economic growth for the insurance industry. The production function of the insurance industry is based on the assumption that the output, "incurred losses," is a function of "invested assets" and "other labor and nonlabor inputs." The latter grow at the rate  n , a proxy of the growth rate of insurance expenses. The assets–inputs ratio,  r , characterizes the steady-state growth path that the insurance industry eventually attains. The adjustment process takes place through the assets–losses ratio,  v , which is affected by the insurance leverage, the loss ratio, and the insurance exposure of the insurance industry. An insurance industry that has reached a steady state will have its output growing at the rate  n  +π, where π is the growth rate of average productivity. The incremental reserve ratio,  s , determines definitely a steady-state growth path for the insurance industry. An increase or decrease in  s  may move the insurance industry to a higher or lower growth path. We suggest that this analysis provides a stronger theoretical context for analyzing dynamic phenomena in the insurance industry.     

经济政策不确定性、地区文化与保险需求

本文在拓展背景风险理论研究的基础上,揭示了经济政策不确定性对保险需求的影响及其受地区文化制约的理论机制。并利用2007-2017年中国30个地区的月度面板数据,检验了经济政策不确定性、地区文化与保险需求间的内在联系。结果发现:第一,经济政策不确定性会对保险需求产生显著正影响,且这种效应在地区人身险需求上表现更明显;第二,将地区文化指标集纳入经济政策不确定性与保险需求关系的研究框架,发现地区文化差异会对经济政策不确定性影响保险需求产生调节效应。因此政府需在充分重视经济政策波动和文化对经济活动的双重影响基础上,加强国内社会保障体系建设,建立更透明的信息传递渠道,培育人们主动抵抗风险的意识和文化习惯,调整保险供给结构,以减少不确定性对社会经济行为的负面冲击。     

Financing and the demand for corporate insurance

In this paper we examine the insurance decision of a firm with private information regarding its cash flows and insurable losses. We show that, even in the absence of bankruptcy costs and information production by insurers, the firm's attempts to hedge its information risk can induce it to demand insurance. If higher operating revenues are accompanied by a lower insurance risk, the firm will choose to self-insure. In contrast, if higher operating revenues are accompanied by a higher insurance risk, the firm will demand insurance. In fact, if its insurable losses are relatively small, the firm will fully insure its losses. Further, if there exists considerable uncertainty regarding the firm's insurance risk, the level of coverage demanded by the firm is dependent on its private information, with higher levels of coverage signaling favorable information regarding the firm's future operations.     

代际转移与商业养老保险对老年收入的影响差异研究

构建混合利他动机和交换动机下的世代交叠模型,研究个人最优消费决策,测算商业养老保险与代际转移对老年收入水平的影响。结果发现：代际转移支付比例提高会减少商业养老保险的购买,进而降低老年收入水平,与其他因素相比,保险价格变动对保险需求的影响最明显。鉴于此,应丰富居民投资结构,建设高质量的教育体系,发挥家庭养老除代际转移支付之外的多样化功能,同时通过供给侧降费推动居民参与商业养老保险。     

The Demand for Insurance With an Upper Limit on Coverage

The demand for insurance is examined when the indemnity schedule is subject to an upper limit. The optimal contract is shown to display full insurance above a deductible up to the cap. Some results derived in the standard model with no upper limit on coverage turn out to be invalid; the optimal deductible of an actuarially fair policy is positive and insurance may be a normal good under decreasing absolute risk aversion. An increase in the upper limit would induce the policyholder with constant absolute risk aversion to reduce his or her optimal deductible and therefore this would increase the demand for insurance against small losses.     

Social Security,Unemployment, and Growth

The paper develops an overlapping generations model that highlights interactions between social security, unemployment and growth. The social security system has two components: old age pensions and unemployment insurance. Pensions have a direct effect on economic growth. Both pensions and unemployment benefits influence equilibrium unemployment caused by wage bargaining. Since unemployment deteriorates growth, both types of social security have an indirect negative effect on growth.JEL Code: E24, H55, J51     

Capital markets,financial intermediaries,and liquidity supply

We study a dynamic economy endowed with a sequence of overlapping generations of consumers and production processes, and where productive assets are illiquid and consumption preferences are subject to uninsurable demand for liquidity. We characterize the steady states that can be achieved with alternative financial systems. We show that infinitely lived financial intermediaries offering a liability with age-dependent restrictions may implement a social optimum with full insurance. If, instead, they offer anonymous, unrestricted contracts, then only second-best consumption allocations with partial insurance obtain. We also examine the consumption allocations available when agents can trade shares in competitive stock markets. While allowing for trade across generations may or may not improve upon generational autarky, we show that this competitive equilibrium is not a social optimum, and is dominated by a system of infinitely lived, unrestricted intermediaries.     

Tax evasion,financial development and inflation: Theory and empirical evidence

Using a standard overlapping generations monetary production economy, faced with endogenously determined tax evasion by heterogeneous agents in the economy, we provide a theoretical model that indicates that both a lower (higher) level of financial development and a higher (lower) level of inflation leads to a bigger (smaller) shadow economy. These findings are empirically tested within a panel econometric framework, using data collected for 150 countries over the period 1980–2009 to enable a broad generalisation of the results. The results support the developed theoretical model, even after having accounted for the differences in the levels of economic development, the level of institutional quality that includes different tax regimes and regulatory frameworks, central bank participation in the economy as well as different macroeconomic policies.     

Wealth, Income, and Optimal Insurance

This article considers the decision to purchase insurance against possible losses of a property or wealth. The decision involves a standard economic trade‐off between the benefit of protection against loss and the cost of insurance premium. The premium is paid out of the income and decreases the consumption of other goods and services, rather than out of wealth and decreases the property or wealth. The demand for insurance depends mainly on the income and preferences. As a result, unlike in the standard model, a fair premium is neither necessary nor sufficient for the optimality of full coverage insurance. Rather, the individuals with higher incomes purchase full coverage insurance even at unfair prices of insurance while the individuals with lower income purchase partial coverage insurance at a fair price.     

Corporate Insurance Strategy: The Case of British Petroleum

The authors provide a fundamental rethinking of how corporations should evaluate various kinds of risks and risk management solutions—a rethinking that leads to a major shift in British Petroleum's approach to insuring property and casualty losses, product liability suits, and other insurable events. Conventional corporate practice—and until the early 1990s (when this article was written) the longstanding policy of BP and most large oil companies—was to insure against large losses while self‐insuring against smaller ones. In this article, the authors explain why BP has chosen to go against the conventional wisdom and instead buy insurance for mainly smaller losses while self‐insuring larger ones. The BP decision came down to factors affecting the market supply of insurance as well as the corporate demand for it. On the demand side, the authors demonstrate that the primary source of demand for insurance by large public companies is not, as standard insurance textbooks assume, to transfer risk away from the corporation's owners. Because corporate stockholders and bondholders effectively manage the effects of such risks by diversifying their own portfolios, the corporate demand for insurance in BP's case stems from the insurers' comparative advantage in evaluating and monitoring BP's smaller risks and in processing claims. On the supply side, the authors explain why the capacity of insurance companies and markets to underwrite very large or highly specialized exposures—when compared to the industry expertise and financial resources of companies like BP—is quite limited, and likely to remain so. Since premiums would be experience‐rated and prior years' losses simply rolled into the following years' premiums, there would be no effective transfer of risk, and so no gain to BP from buying insurance.     

Dynamic fiscal policies and unemployment in a simple endogenous growth model

This paper analyzes the growth and employment effects of dynamic fiscal policies in an overlapping generations model with endogenous growth and imperfect labour markets. With balanced-budget policies, the modelled closed economy grows at a constant rate which is higher, the lower are the labour tax rate and the unemployment rate. Constant-flow budget policies are not feasible, while government Ponzi games are feasible only if economic agents have implausibly high savings rates. Furthermore, while constant-stock fiscal policies are sustainable, an increase in the debt-to-capital ratio is accompanied by higher taxes, a rise in unemployment and lower economic growth. JEL Classification E24 · J51 · H63 · O41     

指数保险有效性实证分析

运用Miranda模型研究发现,农户个体产量波动与所在区域产量波动存在高度正相关性,基于区域产量保险的保费率低于传统农业保险的保费率,这有利于刺激指数保险的需求。由于指数保险克服了传统农业保险市场中的逆向选择与道德风险问题,降低了交易成本,从而指数保险能够降低农户的保费支出并有效管理农业生产风险。     

Insurance demand and country risks: A nonlinear panel data analysis

This paper investigates the impact of country risks, including political, financial, and economic risks, on the income elasticity of insurance demand. Using the panel smooth transition regression model, we find that there is a significant regime-switching effect concerning the impact of country risks on the income elasticity of insurance demand. A full-sample analysis shows that the income elasticity of insurance demand decreases when country risks diminish. In a subsample analysis based on income level, legal origin, and restriction on banks' participation in insurance activities, we find that the elasticity diminishes in general when economic risk drops. When political risk is lower, the elasticity decreases in countries with high-income, common law origin, and insurance activities permitted by banks, whereas a clear pattern cannot be identified in the case of financial risk.     

The effect of information disclosure on demand for high‐load insurance

Economists, regulators, and consumer protection agencies have highlighted the welfare losses for consumers who purchase high‐load insurance against modest stakes risks. Mandatory information disclosure is a potentially attractive public policy tool that might improve consumers' choices, but has not been widely tested in insurance settings. We conduct an incentive‐compatible insurance demand experiment, in which we manipulate the information disclosed to subjects. We test whether any of the three most commonly suggested disclosures affect insurance demand, disclosing either (1) the true probability of loss, (2) the contract's expected loss, or (3) the insurer's profit on the transaction. Similar to consumers in naturally occurring insurance markets, subjects in the laboratory demonstrate significant demand for high‐load insurance against modest stakes. However, we find no effect of any of the three disclosure treatments on subjects' insurance choices. We discuss the implications of our results for possible public policy initiatives in insurance markets.     

The Effects of Uncertainty on the Demand for Health Insurance

This article analyzes the effects of uncertainty and increases in risk aversion on the demand for health insurance using a theoretical model that highlights the interdependence between insurance and health care demand decisions. Two types of uncertainty faced by the individuals are examined. The first one is the uncertainty in the consumer's pretreatment health and the second is the uncertainty surrounding the productivity of health care. Comparative statics results are reported indicating the impact on the demand for insurance of shifts in the distributions of pretreatment health and productivity of health care in the form of first‐order stochastic dominance, Rothschild–Stiglitz mean‐preserving spreads, and second‐order stochastic dominance. The demand for insurance increases in response to a Rothschild–Stiglitz increase in risk in the distribution of the pretreatment health provided that the health production function is in a special class and the price elasticity of health care is nondecreasing in the pretreatment health. Provided also that the demand for health care is own‐price inelastic, the same conclusion is obtained when the uncertainty is about the productivity of health care.     

Insurance demand in the presence of loss-dependent background risk

We analyze insurance demand when insurable losses come with an uninsurable zero-mean background risk that increases in the loss size. If the individual is risk vulnerable, loss-dependent background risk triggers a precautionary insurance motive and increases optimal insurance demand. Prudence alone is sufficient for insurance demand to increase in two cases: the case of fair insurance and the case where the smallest possible loss exceeds a certain threshold value (referred to as the large loss case). We derive conditions under which insurance demand increases or decreases in initial wealth. In the large loss case, prudence determines whether changes in the background risk lead to more insurance demand. We generalize this result to arbitrary loss distributions and find conditions based on decreasing third-degree Ross risk aversion, Arrow–Pratt risk aversion, and Arrow–Pratt temperance.     

Public capital, public pension, and growth

This paper constructs an endogenous growth model with overlapping generations, whose engine of economic growth is productive public capital. We investigate a public policy under which the government allocates tax revenue between investment in public capital accumulation and public pension provision. We show that increasing the share of spending on public pensions always reduces economic growth. However, we show numerically that public pension provision improves social welfare and there exists an optimal share of spending on public pension provision unless the value of the time discount factor of the government is sufficiently high. Moreover, we show that in an economy facing an aging population, an increase in social security provision for the old rather than an increase in public investment can be preferable from the viewpoint of social welfare.     

Household Life Cycle Protection: Life Insurance Holdings, Financial Vulnerability, and Portfolio Implications

Using the Survey of Consumer Finances, we examine the life cycle demand for different types of life insurance. Specifically, we test for the consumer's aversion to income volatility resulting from the death of a household's wage‐earner through the purchase of life insurance. We first develop a financial vulnerability index to control for the risk to the household. We then examine the life cycle demand for life insurance using several definitions of life insurance. We find, in contrast to previous research, that there is a relationship between financial vulnerability and the amount of term life or total life insurance purchased. In addition, we find older consumers use less life insurance to protect a certain level of financial vulnerability than younger consumers. Secondly, our study provides evidence that life insurance demand is jointly determined as part of a household's portfolio. Finally, we consider the impact of family members' nonmonetary contribution on the household's life cycle protection decision. Our results provide some evidence that households take into account the value of nonmonetary contribution in their insurance purchase.     

Wenn nicht jetzt, wann dann? Zur Reform der Pflegeversicherung

The recent reform of the German compulsory long-term care insurance provides for an adjustment of the benefits. According to our calculations, the reform proposal will fail to ensure constant benefits in real terms, due to an increase of the demand for long-term care associated with population ageing. Furthermore, as long-term care insurance is payroll based and pay-as-you-go financed, it will substantially burden future generations. For this reason, further reforms are needed if sustainability is to be achieved. A transition from a pay-as-you-go to a funded system would disburden future generations almost completely, at the cost of transitory generations whose payments would markedly increase. Delaying the reform even a few years would however increase the burden for future generations again.     

气候风险对中国农业经济发展的影响——异质性及机制分析

科学评估气候风险的经济影响是管理气候风险的第一步。本文利用气象站数据和各地区农业经济数据,实证分析了气候风险对我国农业经济发展的影响,并重点分析了该影响的异质性和相关机制。结果显示,气候风险较高地区的农业经济发展要显著慢于其它地区,且该结果在多种模型设定下以及不同衡量变量下都保持一致。异质性分析表明,气候风险对同一地理区域内人均收入水平较低地区的影响更加显著;对农业保险保障水平较高或农业现代化水平较高地区的影响则较小,说明农业保险的发展和农业现代化水平的提高可以降低气候风险对农业经济的负面影响。机制分析表明,从农业投入和产出关系来看,气候风险直接作用于农业经济产出,而非通过影响投入再作用于产出;从气候风险和自然灾害关系来看,气候风险会通过增加自然灾害严重程度对农业经济发展产生不利影响,同时也会直接对农业经济造成负面影响。本文研究为管理气候风险、促进现代农业经济发展和保障粮食供给安全提供了有益启示。