Researchers frequently question whether financial firms benefit by developing new products because barriers to entry common to other industries generally do not exist. Studies of early mover advantages for new financial products provide mixed evidence at best. We find evidence of early mover...

In the 1980's, life insurers sold guaranteed investment contracts (GICs) to pension plan sponsors, then backed these contracts with portfolios heavily weighted with higher risk assets such as common stocks and junk bonds. Ultimately this caused considerable loss, and history has repeated itself...

Financial researchers initially regarded hedging activities as a means to reduce total firm risk, which often is defined in terms of cash flow volatility. More recently, researchers have focused on the strategic allocation of risk. Direct tests of risk allocation have been problematic, however,...

An analysis of research contributions to The Journal of Insurance Issues and Practices is conducted for the years 1977 through 1989. The relative contributions of individual authors, their employers, and their degree grantors are analyzed. The evidence generated in this study provides...

Financial researchers initially regarded hedging activities as a means to reduce total firm risk, which often is defined in terms of cash flow volatility. More recently, researchers have focused on the strategic allocation of risk. Direct tests of risk allocation have been problematic, however,...

Regulatory separation theory indicates that a system with multiple regulators leads to less forbearance and limits producer gains while a model of banking regulation developed by Dell’Ariccia and Marquez (2006) predicts the opposite. Fragmented regulation of the US life insurance industry...