This paper investigates the relationship between female CEOs and insolvency risk of U.S. property-casualty insurance companies. We show that female CEOs are associated with lower insurer insolvency propensity, higher z-score, and lower standard deviation of return on assets. These findings are...

Insurers' principal function – underwriting – is to assess and price customer risk. Economic theory suggests that insurers should prioritize underwriting over investment as a source of income. We find that many U.S. non-life insurers conform to theory: they consistently earn high returns on...

We examine costs and benefits associated with accounting standards that allow property-casualty insurers to discount their loss reserves. While discounting reserves presents a more complete assessment of a firm’s economic condition, it may also be used to manage earnings. Using a sample of...

During the 1980s, the federal income tax treatment of property-casualty insurers and their policyholders underwent several important changes, the most significant of which came in 1986. This paper develops theoretical predictions for how these changes should have affected the equilibrium prices...

Given the rapidly growing industry-wide trends to promote diversity, we provide the first evidence that executive gender differences impact insurer corporate decisions by examining reserve management of property-liability insurers. We find that female CEOs are more conservative in estimating...

This study investigates the level, structure, and pay-for-performance relationship of CEO compensation in Korean non-life insurance companies. We find that seniority plays an important role in setting CEO compensation practices and that performance-based pay, such as bonus, is more effective...

Insurance coverage plays an important role in protecting households, businesses and governments from the financial impacts of climate-related disasters. However, climate change is expected to increase the frequency and/or intensity of a range of climate-related (weather) perils and could...

We investigate the relationship between product diversification and performance in the Dutch property-liability (P&L) insurance industry for the period 2007-2018. We employ a two-step approach: we first investigate the drivers of diversification and, as a second step, we investigate the impact...

In this paper, we study two types of accounting conservatism in the property-liability (P&L) insurance industry – ex-ante and ex-post conservatism. Ex-ante conservatism means that firms over-report liabilities initially, before more detailed information becomes available. In contrast, ex-post...

In this paper, we investigate earnings management surrounding forced CEO turnover for U.S. property-casualty insurance companies with differing organizational forms. We analyze the three principal organizational form types in the industry – publicly-traded stocks, closely-held stocks, and...

Shipping was central to the rise of the Atlantic economies, but an extremely hazardous activity: in the 1780s, roughly five per cent of British ships sailing in summer for the United States never returned. Against the widespread belief that shipping technology was stagnant before iron...