Journal ArticleDOI
Optimal Capital Utilization by Financial Firms: Evidence from the Property-Liability Insurance Industry
J. David Cummins,Gregory P. Nini +1 more
TLDR
This paper investigated the use of capital by insurers to provide evidence on whether the capital increase represents a legitimate response to changing market conditions or a true inefficiency that leads to performance penalties for insurers.Abstract:
Capitalization levels in the property-liability insurance industry have increased dramatically in recent years—the capital-to-assets ratio rose from 25% in 1989 to 35% by 1999. This paper investigates the use of capital by insurers to provide evidence on whether the capital increase represents a legitimate response to changing market conditions or a true inefficiency that leads to performance penalties for insurers. We estimate “best practice” technical, cost, and revenue frontiers for a sample of insurers over the period 1993–1998, using data envelopment analysis, a non-parametric technique. The results indicate that most insurers significantly over-utilized equity capital during the sample period. Regression analysis provides evidence that capital over-utilization primarily represents an inefficiency for which insurers incur significant revenue penalties.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Optimal labor and capital utilization by financial firms: evidence from the German property and casualty insurance industry
Journal ArticleDOI
Multi-objective reference point techniques to optimize profitability, growth, and risk in the non-life insurance industry: international analysis
TL;DR: In this paper , reference point techniques and econometric analyses are combined to provide the profile of non-life insurers that simultaneously optimize the strategic growth, profitability, and risk goals, and the results indicate that the highest level of profitability (growth) is linked to scenarios with a medium (low) level of maturity and booming times.
Journal ArticleDOI
What drives the capital structure? The case of non-life insurance companies in Serbia
Miloš Božović,Marija Koprivica +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors applied a panel-data approach to examine the relationship between leverage, defined as the ratio of technical reserves to capital, and various firm-level characteristics.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure
TL;DR: In this article, the authors draw on recent progress in the theory of property rights, agency, and finance to develop a theory of ownership structure for the firm, which casts new light on and has implications for a variety of issues in the professional and popular literature.
Journal ArticleDOI
Some Models for Estimating Technical and Scale Inefficiencies in Data Envelopment Analysis
TL;DR: The CCR ratio form introduced by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes, as part of their Data Envelopment Analysis approach, comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form, as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and/or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs as mentioned in this paper.
Posted Content
Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers
TL;DR: In this paper, the benefits of debt in reducing agency costs of free cash flows, how debt can substitute for dividends, why diversification programs are more likely to generate losses than takeovers or expansion in the same line of business or liquidationmotivated takeovers, and why the factors generating takeover activity in such diverse activities as broadcasting and tobacco are similar to those in oil.
Journal ArticleDOI
Corporate financing and investment decisions when firms have information that investors do not have
TL;DR: In this paper, a firm that must issue common stock to raise cash to undertake a valuable investment opportunity is considered, and an equilibrium model of the issue-invest decision is developed under these assumptions.
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