The recent wave of demutualizations has led to the declining significance of the mutual organizational form in the U.S. life insurance industry. In this paper, we consider the different methods of conversion to explore if the motivations were similar across the firms that chose to fully...

Automobile and workers' compensation insurance are relatively homogeneous products sold under varying regulatory systems among the states. This paper investigates how price regulation affects the capital structure decisions of profit-maximizing insurers who sell insurance in both competitive...

What changes are affecting business education today? How are business schools responding to challenges and opportunities of the contemporary environment? We asked six business school leaders to share their thoughts with our readers. Each is a distinguished business educator and leader. They...

There has been a net propensity over the last decade for the dominant rating agency of the U.S. insurance industry, A.M. Best, to downgrade property-liability insurers. This could reflect a general deteriorating credit worthiness of the industry or an increase in the performance thresholds...

Under perfect market conditions, standard capital budgeting theory predicts that the discount rates on projects should reflect only non-diversifiable risk and be constant across firms. However, theoretical research by Froot and Stein (1998), among others, suggests that when firms invest in...