This paper examines whether managers impact firm performance when their firms are in distress. We conservatively define managerial ability as the manager's capacity to deploy the firm's resources. We verify the validity of our metric using a manager-firm matched panel data set which allows us to...

This paper provides a detailed description of a new measure of reserve error, the Full Information Reserve Error (FIRE), which was first proposed by Grace and Leverty (2018). We briefly describe the philosophy of FIRE and its advantages. We then present the details on how to calculate it. We...

We use two reserve error definitions found in the literature to investigate the joint impact of previously studied incentives on the magnitude of reserve error. We find many prior conclusions are dependent upon the restricted setting in which the hypotheses are tested and on the definition of...

This paper investigates whether elections delay regulatory action against failing financial institutions by exploiting the cross-sectional and time-series heterogeneity in the exogenous electoral cycles of U.S. insurance regulators and governors. We find causal evidence that regulators delay...

We evaluate the two main methods to measuring property-liability insurer efficiency: the production and "flow" (or financial intermediation) approaches. The two approaches are not mutually consistent and thus potentially yield different answers to tested hypotheses. The production approach is...

A vast majority of insurers are regulated by each state in which they conduct business; however, a small subset of specialized firms, risk retention groups (RRGs), are largely exempt from most aspects of duplicative regulation no matter how many states they operate. This paper analyzes the...

We study whether digital technology streamlines the regulatory process and reduces the costs of complying with regulation. To identify the effect of digital technology on regulatory compliance costs, we leverage a quasi-experimental policy change which mandates the use of an internet-based flow...

This paper examines the relation between the degree and type of strategic interaction among industry firms and firm performance. As a measure of firm performance, we use data envelopment analysis (DEA) to estimate the efficiency of a firm relative to the ‘best practice' firms in its industry....

We identify the effect of public guarantees on market discipline by exploiting the rich variation in U.S. state guarantees of property-liability insurer obligations. We find that insurer financing is significantly more risk-sensitive in the absence of government guarantees. The effects are...

We investigate the role of organizational structure in financial services markets by examining the U.S. life insurance industry. Traditionally stock and mutual life insurers were equally represented, but now the industry is mainly comprised of stock firms. We find operational efficiency, access...