Reinsurance is a transaction insurance firms use to hedge risk. Existing studies have only investigated the demand for reinsurance. Thus, we do not have direct evidence on whether the use of reinsurance creates value. Our study provides this evidence. We find a positive relation between the use...

We investigate whether insurers can improve their operating risk-return profile by adding commercial loans, a banking product, in the traditional insurance product mix. This analysis is important for two reasons. First, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 allows insurers to buy and operate banks....

Where information is costly, volatile cash flows create information acquisition costs that reduce value. Thus, managers act to reduce their firm’s volatility of cash flow in anticipation of higher value for shareholders. However, when managers reduce the firm’s cash flow volatility, they...

We construct two potential scenarios to depict the cash flows from the operation of a captive insurer. We then use Monte Carlo simulation to identify conditions that are sustainable in practice and under which captives have a high probability of creating positive shareholder value. We use...

Reinsurance is a transaction insurance firms use to hedge risk. Existing studies have only investigated the demand for reinsurance. Thus, we do not have direct evidence on whether the use of reinsurance creates value. Our study provides this evidence. We find a positive relation between the use...

Concentration in the U.S. insurance industry's market shares and ownership, coupled with a network interlocking ownership relationships by institutional investors, raise social concerns. Studying the relationship between Tobin's q and corporate governance features of the industry, we fail to...

This article applies the concept of prudence to develop the characteristics of responsible risk modeling practices in the insurance industry. A critical evaluation of the risk modeling process suggests that ethical judgments are emergent rather than static, vague rather than clear, particular...

The existing concepts of risk management face challenges when applied in practice. The perception of risk depends on the observer's cognitive biases and world view which nuance risk related decisions. How an observer decides also depends on the metric used to quantify risk. While there is...

This study draws on established literature to frame the hypotheses that a property-casualty insurer generates value from its underwriting operations. The study relies on both, results from a multi-period simulation of an insurance firm, and results from regressions using two panels of data...

In a word, where information is costly, volatile cash flows create information acquisition costs that reduce value. Thus, managers act to reduce their firm's volatility of cash flow in anticipation of higher value for shareholders. However, when managers reduce the firm's cash flow volatility,...