The Economics of Property-Casualty Insurance presents new research and findings on key aspects of the economics of the property-casualty insurance industry. The volume explores the industrial organization, regulation, financing, and taxation of this business. The first paper, on external financing and insurance cycles, contains a wealth of information on trends and patterns in the industry's financial structure. The last essay, which compares performance of stock and mutual insurance companies, takes a fresh look at the way a company's organizational structure affects its responses to different economic situations. Two papers focus on rate regulation in the auto insurance industry, and provide broad overviews of the structure and economics of the insurance industry as a whole. Also addressed are the system of regulating insurance companies in the United States, who insures the insurers, and the effects of tax law changes in the 1980s on the prices of insurance policies.

This paper explores insurance as a source of financial system vulnerability. It provides a brief overview of the insurance industry and reviews the risks it faces, as well as several recent failures of insurance companies that had systemic implications. Assimilation of banking-type activities by life insurers appears to be the key systemic vulnerability. Building on this experience and the experience gained under the FSAP, the paper proposes key indicators that should be compiled and used for surveillance of financial soundness of insurance companies and the insurance sector as a whole.

The book brings together academics, regulators, and industry experts to provide a multifaceted array of research and perspectives on insurance, its role and functioning, and the potential systemic risk it could create.

Over the past two decades, the United States has successfully deregulated prices and restrictions on most previously-regulated industries, including airlines, trucking, railroads, telecommunications, and banking. Only a few industries remain regulated, the largest being the property-liability insurance business. In light of recent sweeping financial modernization legislation in other sectors of the insurance industry, this timely volume examines the basis for continued regulation of rates and forms of the U.S. property-liability insurance market. The book focuses on private passenger automobile insurance—the most important personal line of property-liability coverage, with annual premiums of about $120 billion. The authors analyze five state case studies: California, Massachusetts, and New Jersey—three of the most heavily regulated states—as well as Illinois, which has been deregulated for about 30 years, and South Carolina, which began to deregulate in 1997. The study also includes an econometric analysis based on all fifty states over a 25-year period that gauges the impact of regulation on insurance price levels, price volatility, and the proportion of automobiles insured in residual markets. The authors conclude that regulation does not significantly reduce long-run prices for consumers, and generally limits availability of coverage, reduces the quality and variety of services available in the market, inhibits productivity growth, and increases price volatility. Contributors include Dwight Jaffee (University of California, Berkeley), Thomas Russell (Santa Clara University ), Laureen Regan (Temple University), Sharon Tennyson (Cornell University), Mary Weiss (Temple University), John Worrall (Rutgers University), Stephen D'Arcy (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Martin Grace (Georgia State University), Robert Klein (Georgia State University), Richard Phillips (Georgia State University), Georges Dionne (University of Montreal), and Richard Butler (Brigham Young University).