Solvency-both as an economic requirement in the market and as a regulatory and supervisory tool-is critical to all insurance markets. Current market conditions, coupled with expected institutional changes, will place particular burdens on emerging and developing markets. Institutional solvency,...

The author uses a political economy framework to analyze cross-country differences in deposit insurance coverage. He finds supporting evidence of the significance of private interest theories in explaining coverage of deposit insurance. Deposit insurance coverage is significantly higher in...

Deposit insurance schemes and bank failure resolution systems are asked to fulfill conflicting public policy objectives: on the one hand, they are supposed to protect small depositors and prevent contagion risks from bank runs; on the other hand, they are supposed to minimize aggressive risk...

Should deposit insurance be recommended? No. History teaches us three lessons: 1) deposit insurance was not adopted primarily to protect the depositor. There were many ways to increase the soundness of the banking system. The leading alternative was to allow branching and the diversification of...

Based on evidence of 61 countries in 1980-97, the authors find that explicit deposit insurance tends to be detrimental to bank stability, the more so where bank interest rates are deregulated and the institutional environment is weak. The adverse impact of deposit insurance on bank stability...

While the real sector and governments (along with a few micro economists) have long recognized the core economic role that the insurance function plays, the mainstream economics profession has largely treated it as invisible background. This literature review of the relevant research, most of...

Residual stochastic risks from catastrophic natural events can be addressed through insurance pooling and risk transfer mechanisms that provide thebasis for financial protection and instill strong incentives for reducing vulnerability. To reduce the economic stress after disasters, the author...

About a dozen developing countries have deposit insurance systems and several others are considering establishing them. These systems are typically created to prevent contagious bank runs, to provide a formal national mechanism for handling failing banks, and to protect small depositors from...

The authors examine the effect of different design features of deposit insurance, on long-run financial development, defined to include the level of financial activity, the stability of the banking sector, and the quality of resource allocation. Their empirical analysis is guided by recent...

Bancassurance is the process of using a bank's customer relationships to sell life and non-life insurance products. In some developed countries it has had a dramatic impact on developing sales volumes, attaining market shares in excess of 50 percent in life and more than 10 percent in non-life....