We investigate the effect of the 20 largest – in terms of insured losses – man-made or natural disasters on the insurance industry. We show via an event study that insurance markets worldwide are quite resilient to unexpected losses to capital and are even outperforming the general market...

This chapter focuses on institutional investors in the German financial markets. Institutional investors are specialized financial intermediaries who collect and manage funds on behalf of small investors toward specific objectives in terms of risk, return and maturity. The major types of...

This paper analyzes dynamic equilibrium risk sharing contracts between profit-maximizing intermediaries and a large pool of ex-ante identical agents that face idiosyncratic income uncertainty that makes them heterogeneous ex-post. In any given period, after having observed her income, the agent...

When liquidity plays an important role as in times of financial crisis, asset prices in some markets may reflect the amount of liquidity available in the market rather than the future earning power of the asset. Mark-to-market accounting is not a desirable way to assess the solvency of a...

Mutual insurance companies and stock insurance companies are different forms of organized risk sharing: policyholders and owners are two distinct groups in a stock insurer, while they are one and the same in a mutual. This distinction is relevant to raising capital, selling policies, and sharing...

This paper investigates the impact of insurance contract design on the behavior of filing fraudulent claims in an experimental setup. We test how fraud behavior varies for insurance contracts with full coverage, a straight deductible or variable premiums (bonus-malus contract). In our...

Welche Folgen hat die europäische Integration für die Mitgliedstaaten? In diesem Artikel geht es mir darum zu zeigen, wie die Verflechtung mit der EU die institutionellen Handlungsoptionen nationaler Akteure verändert. Mein Ausgangspunkt ist das deutsche politische System, das aufgrund...

In a two-stage model insurance companies first decide upon risk classification and then compete in prices. I show that the observed heterogeneous behavior of similar firms is compatible with rational behavior. On the deregulated German insurance market individual application of classification...

Eine globale, nachhaltige Entwicklung erfordert eine aktive Beteiligung der inter-national wie lokal agierenden Wirtschaftsakteure. Finanzdienstleister haben einenbedeutenden Einfluss auf Unternehmen und Märkte und nehmen daher eine ent-scheidende Rolle ein. Es stellt sich die zentrale Frage,...