Public sector activities are often neglected in economic approaches to analyze the driving forces of urban growth and changes in urban hierarchies. One crucial aspect of public sector activities is the institutional status of cities as regional capital. The paper is reporting on a quasi natural...

The last decades have witnessed the rise of a new wave of economic regionalism, the most remarkable example of which is the European Union. Regional economic integration is generally interpreted either as an attempt to resist the centrifugal forces of globalisation by strenghtening economic ties...

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...

Our paper analyses the effect of natural catastrophes on insurance demand in a developing economy and the specific role of insurance regulation in this relationship. We base our analysis on a theoretical model as well as a panel regression using household survey level data for Vietnam and...

In the paper we analyze the economic, social, cultural, institutional and political factors that determine regional demand for services like "insurance". As economic factors, we analyze the impact of non-governmental credit over the insurance market. Development of an econometric model is based...

I revisit the question of which motive underlies insurance demand. I draw on the literature of state-dependent utility and on the literature of imperfectly divisible consumption to argue that the general purpose of insurance is not a risk transfer, but meeting a conditional need. In this way,...