Kenneth Arrow and Karl Borch published several important articles in the early 1960s that can be viewed as the beginning of modern economic analysis of insurance activity. This chapter reviews the main theoretical and empirical contributions in insurance economics since that time. The review...

This paper addresses the role of independent insurance intermediaries in markets where matching is important. A controversial matter in the discussion concerning insurance interme- diation is the issue of compensation customs and how the latter affect prices, rents and advice quality in...

This article addresses the role of independent insurance intermediaries in markets where matching is important. We compare fee-based and commission-based compensation systems and show that they are payoff equivalent if the intermediary is completely honest. Allowing for strategic behavior, we...

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 offer a novel explanation of underwriting volatility in property-liability insurance markets in terms of private uncertainty over public regulatory policy. Underwriting involving random losses to policyholders is one source of risk to the equity value of insurance firms. Solvency regulations,...

The development of international norms for insurance has not progressed as far or as deeply as the development of international norms for banking. Several factors have affected this process. First, the efforts to develop such norms are relatively new. The International Association of Insurance...

With more than $50 trillion in assets worldwide, investment funds run by the insurance industry and pension system are one of the most systemically important elements of the global financial system. In March 2014, following the global and euro area financial and economic crises, the European...

In 2018, the Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD) was fully implemented by all EU member states. It intends to harmonize the insurance market, provide the right incentives for the agents and protect the consumers. But why? The core business of the banking sector makes it necessary for a...

This document (of 271 pages) contains the proceedings of a one-day roundtable on competition and regulation issues in the insurance industry, held at the OECD in June 1998. The publication includes submissions from 13 OECD member countries which set out in detail the regulatory regime and the...

Successive crises in the early twenty-first century prompted regulators around the world to ask financial institutions to implement a series of regulations. These measures aimed to increase transparency, improve consumer and investor protection, restructure financial capital, stabilize insurance...