Cassandra R. Cole

Issues associated with the relation between the separation of ownership and management and risk‐taking behavior have been considered in an array of studies, with varying results. Due to the wide variety of ownership structures present, the property–casualty insurance industry provides an excellent setting to test the conflicting hypotheses related to separation of ownership from management and risk taking behavior. Employing a large sample of property–liability insurance companies over the period of 1996–2004, we empirically test the alternative hypotheses regarding the implications of separation of ownership from management for firms’ risk taking behavior. The empirical tests include the ownership structures specified in prior research as well as a more detailed classification scheme. We find that each ownership structure is significantly different from every other ownership structure in terms of risk.

In empirical research related to the property‐casualty insurance industry, studies commonly focus on either insurers or reinsurers. However, in many cases, the definition used to make the distinction between the two groups is often not clearly defined and/or the definition varies across studies. This variation could result in a substantially different group of firms being included or excluded from the study, thereby affecting the empirical results obtained. This study builds upon Chen and Hamwi, who compare the performance of U.S. insurers and reinsurers. The objective of the study is fourfold: (1) to compare the definitions of insurer and reinsurer commonly used in prior research to identify differences, (2) to expand upon the traditional methods of classifying insurers and reinsurers, (3) to compare the individual firm‐level characteristics of insurers and reinsurers to detect potential variation across categories and across definitions, and (4) to analyze the impact of different definitions on the results of multivariate analyses exploring common research questions. The univariate results indicate that there are some variations in the characteristics of the firms based on the categorization of insurers and reinsurers arising from different definitions. In addition, we find that there are significant differences in the regression results when comparing models based on various definitions of reinsurers utilized in prior research and when professional reinsurers and incidental reinsurers are grouped together. As such, it is possible that the definition used to include or exclude reinsurers from the sample can impact the results.

This study examines the effect of the state of the international reinsurance market on the demand for reinsurance by U.S. insurers using data from the years 1993 through 2000. Both the overall demand for reinsurance and the utilization of foreign reinsurance by U.S. insurers are explored. In addition to supporting the findings of prior literature related to the traditional motives for the corporate demand for insurance, evidence indicates that the state of the U.S. reinsurance industry impacts the amount of reinsurance demanded by U.S. insurers. The study also investigates reasons why U.S. insurers utilize a reinsurance program composed of both U.S. and foreign reinsurers. The results indicate that the decision to utilize some percentage of foreign reinsurance is driven primarily by the financial and operational characteristics of the ceding company such as firm size, group affiliation, and organizational form. However, no support is found for the hypothesis that possible differences between the foreign and U.S. reinsurance markets impact the decision to utilize foreign reinsurance.