中国保险业效率的实证分析

中国于2001年加入WTO,在2006年必须对外完全开放国内保险市场。然而,国内保险市场主要份额迄今仍由少数几家大型国有的或政府控制的公司所占有。由于国内保险市场欠发达,对保险的需要仍在呈现指数式上涨,所以对非国有的、海外的和合资保险公司来说存在着巨大的潜力、机遇和挑战。效率是政策制定者进一步鼓励保险业发展而关注的一个关键性因素。本文将集中探讨这个问题。本文使用了中国22家保险公司1999—2002年的一组数据,运用DEA方法评估了它们的效率分数,并应用一个计量经济学模型鉴别和确定了决定效率高低的主要因素。本文实证分析结果指出了提高保险公司效率的方向,并证明公司规模、所有制形式、营销方式和人力资本是影响保险公司效率的重要因素。本文的结论还为未来中国保险业发展的改革政策设计与执行提供了理论和经验支持。

The Empirical Analysis of Efficiency of China's Insurance Industry

China joined the WTO in 2001 and has to fully open up its insurance market to foreign competitors by 2006. However, the domestic insurance market is overwhelmingly dominated by a few large state-owned or state-controlled firms. As the market is still underdeveloped and the demand for insurance is rising exponentially, there exists huge potential, opportunities as well as challenges for non-state, foreign and joint-venture insurance companies. Efficiency is a key concern of policy makers to encourage further development of the insurance industry. This paper focuses on this important issue. It uses a panel data set of 22 firms over the period 1999—2002 to evaluate their efficiency scores applying a DEA approach. It then employs an econometric model to identify the key determinants of efficiency. The empirical results suggest the direction of how to improve firm efficiency. It is found that firm size, ownership structure, mode of business and human capital are important factors affecting firm performance. The results shed important light on policy design and implementations on future development of the insurance industry with WTO obligations.