Due to the highly skewed and heavy-tailed distributions associated with the insurance claims process, we evaluate the Rubinstein-Leland (RL) model for its ability to improve the cost of equity estimates of insurance companies because of its distribution-free feature. Our analyses show that there...

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...

We present a European call option that is defined on a pension annuity insurance contract. This option gives the holder of the contract the opportunity to buy a pension annuity benefit for a given (strike) price at the age of retirement or any other age. Thus instead of contributed monthly...

This article examines the efficiency changes of U.S. life insurers before and after demutualization in the 1980s and 1990s. We use two frontier approaches (the value-added approach and the financial intermediary approach) to measure the efficiency changes. In addition, we use Malmquist indices...