This paper provides cross-country evidence on the association between soundness and competition in the life insurance industry, where competition is measured by the Boone indicator. We analyze 10 European Union (EU) life insurance markets over the post-deregulation period 1999–2011. The...

This paper provides evidence of the role that financial market development and institutional quality play in the integration of European Union (EU) life insurance markets. It analyzes ten EU life insurance markets over a seventeen-year sample period. The meta-technology cost/revenue efficiency...

Purpose - Despite the sophisticated regulatory regime established in Solvency II, analysts should be able to consider other less complex indicators of the soundness of insurers. The Z-score measure, which has traditionally been used as a proxy of individual risk in the banking sector, may be a...

In crisis times, insurance companies might feel the pressure to present a performance of their investment portfolios that is superior to the market, since investment portfolios back the claims of policyholders and serve as a signal for the claims' safety. I seek to show whether a stock market...

In crisis times, insurance companies might feel the pressure to present an investment portfolio performance that is superior to the market, since investment portfolios back the claims of policyholders and serve as a signal for the claims' safety. I investigate how a stock market crisis as...