A well-performing life insurance industry benefits consumers, producers and insurance firm stockholders alike. Unfavourable market conditions stress the need for life insurers to perform well in order to remain solvent. Using a unique supervisory data set, this paper investigates competition and...

This paper investigates competition in the Dutch non-life insurance industry indirectly by measuring scale economies and X-inefficiency, assuming that strong competition would force insurance firms to exploit unused scale economies and to push down inefficiencies. We observe substantial...

This paper is the first detailed and world-wide investigation of the developments in banking competition during the past fiffteen years. Using the Panzar-Rosse approach, we establish significant changes over time in the competitiveness of the banking industry. The changes in competition over...

This paper analyses the impact of loan market competition on the interest rates applied by euro area banks to loans and deposits during the 1994-2004 period, using a novel measure of competition called the Boone indicator. We find evidence that stronger competition implies significantly lower...

The adequate performance of banks, insurers and pension funds is of crucial importance to their private and business customers. The prices and quality of financial products sold by such entities are largely determined by operational efficiency and the degree of competition in the markets...

The Panzar-Rosse test has been widely applied to assess competitive conduct, often in specifcations controlling for firm scale or using a price equation. We show that neither a price equation nor a scaled revenue function yields a valid measure for competitive conduct. Moreover, even an unscaled...

The first part of this paper provides a systematic discussion of the structural problems of competition on financial markets as observed from the demand and from the supply side, using a diagnostic framework. Potential impediments to competition are concentration, entry barriers, lack of...

This paper analyses the impact of loan market competition on the interest rates applied by euro area banks to loans and deposits during the 1994-2004 period, using a novel measure of competition called the Boone indicator. We find evidence that stronger competition implies significantly lower...

Little is known about how competition affects child care centers’ quality. This paper examines the impact of competition on the quality of Dutch child care centers. The results show that high density of child care centers in an area improves scores in quality assessment measures. The...

This paper investigates the cost efficiency and competitive behaviour of the non-life – or property and casualty – insurance market in the Netherlands over the period 1995-2012. We focus on the 2006 health care reform, where public health care insurance has been included in the...