Eckardt Insurance Intermediation

An Economic Analysis of the Information Services Market
2007
ISBN: 978-3-7908-1940-3
Verlag: Physica-Verlag HD
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 246 Seiten

Reihe: Contributions to Economics

Insurance intermediaries can help consumers to economize on information and transaction costs in insurance markets. This book analyzes conduct and performance in the market for insurance information services by applying search theoretical and industrial organization approaches. Based on a sample of 927 insurance intermediaries, coverage empirically studies the factors that affect the quality of the information services provided by them.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Eckardt, Martina

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Contents;6
2;1 Intermediaries in the Insurance Market;8
2.1;1.1 Introduction;8
2.2;1.2 Incompletely Informed Consumers in Personal Insurance Markets;10
2.3;1.3 Net Gains from Trade through Intermediated Exchange;17
2.4;1.4 Insurance Market Microstructure;22
2.5;CI;26
3;2 An Economic Explanation of Insurance Intermediation;29
3.1;2.1 The Basic Model of Information Intermediation;29
3.2;2.2 A Search Theoretical Model of Insurance Intermediation;54
3.3;2.3 Insurance Agents and Brokers in the Insurance Intermediation Model;99
4;3 Competition between Insurance Intermediaries;103
4.1;3.1 Monopolistic Competition and Horizontal Product Differentiation;103
4.2;3.2 Incomplete Information and Costly Search;112
4.3;3.3 Asymmetric Information, Market Conduct and the Market Microstructure;118
4.4;3.4 Summary;155
5;4 The Market for Insurance Intermediation in Germany;157
5.1;4.1 Overview of the Empirical Literature;157
5.2;4.2 Hypotheses, Data and Estimation Methods;164
5.3;4.3 Empirical Results and Discussion;190
6;5 Conclusions;220
7;Appendix;223
8;List of Figures;227
9;List of Tables;229
10;List of Used Symbols;231
11;References;240