Efficiency and productivity in the Thai non-life insurance industry

This paper estimates a stochastic cost frontier for a sample of the non-life insurance industry in Thailand from 2000 to 2007. Our model explicitly considers the heteroscedasticity in the variances of the noise and inefficiency components that could affect the position of the cost frontier as well as the measurement of efficiency. Tests for double heteroscedasticity and appropriate specification for the cost frontier are performed. The chosen model is used to examine whether economies of scale and a change in technology exist. In addition, this paper calculates total factor productivity (TFP) change and decomposes it into scale effect, cost efficiency effect, technology effect, output effect, price effect, and environmental effect. Our results reveal that, on average, Thai non-life insurance firms are between 74 and 79 % efficient, that economies of scale exist, and that regress in technology shifts the cost frontier upward by 2.2 %. The regress in technology is the dominant contributor to a negative TFP growth of 1.15 %. The restructuring of the industry following the 1997 Asian financial crisis finally paid off when the industry experienced technology progress in 2005 and beyond. Between 2005 and 2007, technology progress and productivity growth occurred at a little over 2 % a year. In-depth analysis of the most and the least efficient firms reveals that most efficient firms tend to strategically select types of insurance services and underwrite average and small size sum insured per policy to diversify their risks. In addition, they tend to be savvy investors. The opposite holds for the least efficient firms which concentrate in providing labor-intensive, small sum automobile insurance policies or underwrite large coverage policies for fewer policyholders. Balancing the mix of insurance types, spreading risk across insurance types or across number of policyholders, investing in high yield assets, or developing a market niche may prove beneficial for improving cost efficiency.     

Cost efficiency of insurance firms in Ghana

The huge infrastructural deficit in Africa requires the establishment of an efficient insurance industry in the pursuance of economic development. Unfortunately, global statistics reveal low patronage of insurance in developing countries, thus making its impact limited in the region. To position the industry for economic development, this study utilizes the stochastic frontier technique to undertake a thorough analysis on the cost efficiency of insurers from the perspective of developing economies using Ghana as a case study. The results on the 30 insurers studied from 2005 to 2014 indicate that insurers in Ghana operate with about 53.8% average cost inefficiency. This stands to confirm the long existed low performance perception of Ghanaians about the industry. Factors identified to explain the cost inefficiencies were firm size, market share, capitalization, reinsurance, regulation, and business type. Several policy recommendations that can help boost the cost efficiency of insurers were derived from the results.     

Expansion and Efficiency in Banking: Evidence from Ghana

We use a translog functional form to estimate a stochastic frontier function of cost and profit efficiency (PE) of Ghanaian banks under the Battese–Coelli time‐varying decaying inefficiency parameterization for (unbalanced) panel data. We regressed efficiency estimates on a distance variable controlling for bank size, total cost, and profits. We find that Ghanaian bank PE is worsening, whereas cost efficiency is improving for the period analyzed. Our results show that PE is not related to distance, size, or cost and profitability ratios. Distance is however positively and significantly related to cost efficiency. Cost efficiency is however not influenced by size or cost and profit ratios. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Organizational structure and the internal economy of the firm: The UK insurance industry

There now exists a substantial volume of empirical evidence which has examined the superiority of the ‘M’-form organizational structure for the management of large, diversified enterprises. Regrettably, attention has mainly been focused on manufacturing companies, despite the rising importance of the service sector in most major economies. This paper examines organizational structures within one segment of the UK service sector: the insurance industry. In the UK this industry has undergone significant, regulatory-driven structural change and, as a consequence, the majority of companies have undertaken organizational change. The results produced, however, suggest that many of these companies adopted sub-optimal divisionalized structures.     

审计师工作量压力与盈余质量——基于门槛模型的研究

采用2012-2016年我国上市公司及其签字审计师为样本,引入门槛回归模型,实证分析不同事务所组织机制支持下审计师个人工作量压力如何影响审计行为决策及盈余质量。研究结果表明:会计师事务所行业专长存在门槛效应,行业专长水平越高,事务所组织支持力度越大,审计师工作量压力对公司盈余质量的负面影响越小;会计师事务所综合评价存在门槛效应,事务所综合评价水平越低,事务所组织支持力度越小,审计师工作量压力对公司盈余质量的负面影响越大;会计师事务所人力资本存在门槛效应,人力资本质量越高,审计师工作效率越高,审计师工作量压力对公司盈余质量的负面影响越小。     

Productive performance of the French insurance industry

The purpose of this paper is to provide for both life and non-life insurance an assessment of the relative productive performance of French companies. We use parametric and nonparametric approaches to construct a frontier to be used as a yardstick of productive efficiency. Our data basis covers 84 life and 243 non-life companies for the period 1984–1989. The main findings show a high correlation between parametric and nonparametric results and a wide dispersion in the rates of inefficiency across companies. This dispersion can be reduced when controlling for variations in scale, ownership, distribution, reinsurance, and claims ratios.     

Firm-specific,industry-specific and macroeconomic factors of life insurers’ profitability: Evidence from Canada

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of firm-specific, industry-specific and macroeconomic factors on the performance of life insurance firms. This study focuses on the Canadian life insurance sector, which is the second largest and oldest financial services sector in Canada. Using an empirical framework that incorporates both fixed and dynamic panel models that control for endogeneity issues, this research finds that size, liquidity, and risk exposure of life insurers are significant factors in their profitability. Secondly, industry concentration (e.g., HHI) fail to provide any meaningful evidence to support the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) theory in the static panel models, but in the dynamic models, industry concentration tends to have negative impacts on profitability. Macroeconomic factors such as real GDP growth and equity market returns are found to be significant determinants of insurers’ profitability. Finally, the persistence of profits for life insurers’ seems to lag that of their financial services counterparts (e.g., banks).     

Managing Organizational Culture for Effective Internal Control. From Practice to Theory

Previous studies (see, for example, Carslaw, 1988; Thomas, 1989; Niskanen and Keloharju, 2000; Kinnunen and Koskela, 2002; Van Caneghem, 2002) clearly suggest that public companies' managers tend to round up the first digit of reported earnings (i.e. for companies reporting profits). Based on a sample of listed UK companies and employing earnings rounding-up behaviour (henceforth ERUB) as an indication of earnings management, I attempt to determine the impact of differences in audit quality on earnings management. When I rely on the very popular brand-name proxy (i.e. BigFive versus non-BigFive auditors) to capture differences in audit quality, findings are inconsistent with BigFive auditors constraining earnings management practices (i.e. findings suggest ERUB for both BigFive and non-BigFive clients). Employing an alternative proxy (i.e. based on auditors' industry expertise), findings are only weakly consistent with specialist BigFive auditors constraining earnings management (i.e. ERUB) practices.     

Measuring the performance of Internet companies using a two-stage data envelopment analysis model

In exploring the business operation of Internet companies, few researchers have used data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate their performance. Since the Internet companies have a two-stage production process: marketability and profitability, this study employs a relational two-stage DEA model to assess the efficiency of the 40 dot com firms. The results show that our model performs better in measuring efficiency, and is able to discriminate the causes of inefficiency, thus helping business management to be more effective through providing more guidance to business performance improvement.     

电网工程全寿命周期年费用实证分析

随着我国电力行业的快速发展,电力公司资产规模迅速扩大,如何突破传统管理模式的束缚,探寻提高电网安全稳定运行能力和资产赢利能力、提出适宜的设计方案使项目全寿命周期费用最省的新途径和新方法,成为电力企业亟待解决的关键问题。     

作业水平类别在企业制定生产政策中的作用

作业成本法中的作业水平类别,不仅可以帮助企业核算产品成本,还可以用于评价产品的盈利性,评估生产政策对成本的影响。运用主成分分析法,将企业中多个作业的信息综合成少数几个作业水平类别,然后利用多元线性回归模型,找出各个作业水平类别与企业利润的相关关系,从而可以判断企业生产政策的合适性。     

Under pressure: community water systems in the United States—a production model with water quality and organization type effects

This paper examines the interaction of productive efficiency, water quality and organizational type. A water quality index is constructed employing various contaminants which are then treated together with variables including organizational type as endogenous in an input distance function model. The cost of drinking water quality and inefficiency are derived and hypothesis tests estimated concerning their variation by location, organization type and water quality. The key findings are that more technically efficient water utilities deliver higher quality drinking water and that private firms distribute higher quality water at a higher price and at a higher implicit cost than public utilities despite no overall inefficiency differences between the two organizational types.     

Comparisons of Economic Inefficiency Between Output and Input Measures of Technical Inefficiency Using the Fourier Flexible Cost Function

The current paper constructs a Fourier flexible cost function, which is commonly known to be a more general function form than the typical translog form, and can globally approximate a true (but unknown) cost function. Both allocative and technical inefficiencies are considered using the Fourier function in the context of the parametric approach. The former is modeled using shadow input prices and the latter is formulated either by adding an extra term of scale parameter (when the Farrell's (1957) input technical inefficiency is assumed), or by correcting all the terms involving output quantities by a scale parameter (when the Farrell's output technical inefficiency is assumed). It is found that sample banks could save up to 23% of total costs, within the range of 3 and 69% uncovered by the previous works, in which allocative inefficiency plays a more important role than technical inefficiency. Furthermore, the cost of misallocated labor input alone constitutes more than 80% of total allocative inefficiency. Financial deregulation starting from 1991 in Taiwan appears to have improved economic efficiency of the banking industry.     

The evolution and determinants of Chinese property insurance companies’ profitability: A DEA-based perspective

The property insurance industry grows fast in China and it is necessary to further investigate the profitability of the Chinese property insurance industry. This study investigates the evolution and determinants of the profitability of 53 Chinese property insurers during the year 2013–2017. Profitability is measured by profit ratio efficiency by data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology and a profit ratio change index is applied to compare the performance of these insurers over different periods. Tobit regression models are used to investigate several influencing factors of profitability. The empirical results show the importance of proper arrangement of costs and revenues for an insurer and help to better understand the effect of firm size, age, and product specification on profitability. Some policy implications and suggestions are also proposed.     

Inter-Industry Wage Differentials in Great Britain

The paper considers the determination of earnings of private sector employees in Great Britain, focusing upon the importance of industry affiliation in this process. Whilst cross-sectional estimates, using waves 1 to 4 of the British Household Panel Survey, suggest industry status is of considerable importance, much of this variation is removed by estimating earnings equations by fixed effects methods. Estimated differentials are not inversely related to the steepness of age-earnings pro(r)les in an industry, do not appear to vary over time and are positively related to industry profitability.     

寒冬中的融资困境

船舶业饱受融资渠道少、融资成本高、金融产品少等诸多瓶颈的限制,如何打破这一瓶颈已经成为摆在航运业面前的一个难题。伴随着2011年寒冬的到来,航运产业愈发寒冷。数据显示,2011年前三季度航运板块整体收入同比下降10.23%、利润总额同比下降125.50%。市场预计,由于世界经济增速存在较大的不确定性,航运公司的盈利能力受货运     

我国寿险业运营风险实证研究

基于承保、投资和偿付等三个业务环节的相关指标,构建了我国寿险运营绩效评价指标体系,运用因子分析方法对我国寿险业2005年-2007年运营状况进行分析并揭示其风险,结果表明:我国寿险业具有明显的垄断竞争格局,且这一趋势逐年弱化;三年中大部分寿险公司运营绩效有所提升,特别是2007年各寿险公司运营状况均有所改善,整个行业运营风险有较为显著的降低,究其原因,可能与我国寿险业承保业务的平稳增长和投资领域的扩大等诸多因素有关。     

基层寿险公司公共危机成因及应对策略研究

寿险业是一个承担着巨大风险的行业,这就要求它对危机要具有很强的敏感性。寿险业的诞生、成长和发展历程,证明了它在不断地应对危机和规避风险。近年来,基层公司面临的公共危机日益增多,对寿险从业人员特别是基层管理者提出严峻的挑战。文章分析了基层寿险公司产生公共关系危机的原因,阐述了正确认识公共危机的重要意义,提出处理公共危机一般性策略。     

Estimating banking cost efficiency with the consideration of cost management

This study re-investigates the bank cost efficiency by a combination of two strands of literature. The first strand is related to bank cost efficiency; the other is related to earnings management. Employing the findings reported in bank earnings management literature, this study argues that bank observed total cost (“accounting cost”) may be the biased estimator of the true total cost. Using the biased total cost may thus yield incorrect inferences from estimating bank cost efficiency. We propose a method to modify accounting cost, which is referred to as “economic cost”, to be consistent with the economic theory; that is, one that is free of cost management. Both accounting and economic costs are then adopted to analyze the efficiency of 29 commercial banks in Taiwan banking industry. Our results show that estimated efficiency, with the application of economic cost, offers results that are more reasonable results than those of the accounting cost.     

盈余管理、审计费用与所得税会计政策选择——基于沪深A股上市公司年报数据的实证分析

本文以2003～2005年沪深A股上市公司年报数据为依据,分析了所得税会计核算方法选择与盈余管理程度、审计费用水平之间的关系。研究发现:在我国现行的应税收益-会计收益的差异水平下,应付税款法与纳税影响会计法核算的总体绩效评价指标、盈利预测误差程度均没有显著差异;而采用纳税影响会计法的公司,其盈余管理程度、审计费用水平(“簿记成本“的替代变量)均显著高于采用应付税款法的公司,说明盈余管理与薄记成本是影响所得税会计政策选择的重要因素。