There are two main tax-related arguments regarding the use of reinsurance – the income volatility reduction and the income level enhancement arguments. The income volatility reduction argument contends that firms facing convex tax schedules have incentives to hedge in order to reduce the...

International trade finance is concerned broadly with all aspects of the post-production financing of international trade transactions. Thus, it includes methods of international settlement, the documentation of international trade, risk management techniques, short- and long-term lending and...

In the insurance industry, claims tend to constitute the major proportion of total annual outgoings across almost all product lines. This study develops a cost function of insurance claims and applies the model to 1988–93 data from the United Kingdom and New Zealand life insurance industries....

Executive Summary The Determinants of Credit Ratings in the United Kingdom Insurance Industry Academic researchers have devoted a considerable amount of attention to the activities of credit rating agencies over the past 20 years, focusing in particular on the agencies’ potential role in...

There has been much publicity surrounding “new economy” companies, a term embracing “dot.com”, “high-tech” and “innovative high growth” companies, amongst others. Whilst such generic terminology serves to obscure the very real differences between such companies, they are...

Preface: In 1776, Adam Smith diagnosed an oversupply in “that unprosperous race of men” called men of letters: “…their numbers are every-where so great as commonly to reduce the price of their labour to a very paltry recompense.” (The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Ch. 10) By the...

This paper examines the effects of corporate governance mechanisms (measured by a set of board characteristics) on the profit efficiency of United Kingdom (UK) life insurance firms. A parametric ‘stochastic frontier' approach is used to compute profit efficiency scores and second-stage...

This study examines the gender wage gap between male and female workers in the US using a cross-section from the Current Population Survey (CPS) It shows that the extent of gender segregation by both industry and occupation is significantly greater than previously supposed. For the wage gap this...

This study examines the gender wage gap between male and female workers in the US using a cross-section from the Current Population Survey (CPS) It shows that the extent of gender segregation by both industry and occupation is significantly greater than previously supposed. For the wage gap this...

This study examines the gender wage gap in the US using two separate cross-sections from the Current Population Survey (CPS). The extensive literature on this subject includes papers which use wage decompositions to divide gender wag gaps into “explained” and “unexplained” components....