This paper empirically investigates if insurers exhibited a flight home or flight to quality during the European sovereign debt crisis and other stages of the financial crisis. Our dataset consists of over sixty insurance companies, for which we separately observe trading behaviour and portfolio...

This paper is the first that formally compares investment risk taking by pension funds and insurance firms. Using a unique and extended dataset that covers the volatile investment period 1995-2009, we find that, in the Netherlands, insurers take substantially less investment risk than pension...

International trade relies on trade finance (credit or insurance) by financial institutions. Data limitations, however, have made it difficult to quantify the impact of changes in the supply of trade finance on trade. This paper is the first to establish a causal link between the supply of...

In a world of perfect markets, primary insurers could hedge catastrophic risks using financial instruments. In practice however, most primary insurers deal with catastrophic risk by the use of a financial intermediary - a reinsurer. This paper uses insights gained from the institutional...

This paper investigates the cost efficiency and competitive behaviour of the non-life - or property and casualty - insurance market in the Netherlands over the period 1995-2012. We focus on the 2006 health care reform, where public health care insurance has been included in the non-life...

Private trade credit insurance - covering the risk of non-payment - plays an important role in facilitating domestic and international trade, especially within Europe. Due to lack of data, however, very little is known about the influence of shocks on the market for private trade credit...

This paper provides new field evidence on risk preferences over small stakes. Using unique population and survey data on deductible choice in Dutch universal health insurance, we find that risk preferences are a dominant factor in decision aking. In fact, our results indicate that risk...

A well-performing life insurance industry benefits consumers, producers and insurance firm stockholders alike. Unfavourable market conditions stress the need for life insurers to perform well in order to remain solvent. Using a unique supervisory data set, this paper investigates competition and...

This study presents a core-periphery model to determine the optimal size of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), building on Jeanne and Ranciere (2011). While the periphery is subject to a probability of losing access to external credit, the core's incentive for setting up an ESM stems...

This paper measures the 'blurring of distinctions' phenomenon in an innovative way, namely by means of a breakdown of the revenues of the 50 largest financial groups worldwide. These data show that the blurring of distinctions between financial intermediaries of different nationalities (i.e....