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Full-Text Articles in Business
Race, Redlining, And Automobile Insurance Prices, Scott E. Harrington, Gregory R. Niehaus
Race, Redlining, And Automobile Insurance Prices, Scott E. Harrington, Gregory R. Niehaus
Faculty Publications
Following Becker's (1993) suggestion that tests for discrimination should attempt to infer whether profits differ for products sold to minorities and nonminorities, this article tests the hypothesis that racial discrimination affects market prices of auto insurance in Missouri. Compared with tests for discrimination in lending markets, our results are less susceptible to bias from omitted variables.Controlling for available demographic and coverage- related factors, we do not find that loss ratios at the zip-code level are negatively related to percent minority population. This finding is inconsistent with the hypothesis that racial discrimination increases premiums relative to expected claim costs for minorities.
The Coexistence Of Multiple Distribution Systems For Financial Services: The Case Of Property-Liability Insurance, Allen N. Berger, J. David Cummins, Mary A. Weiss
The Coexistence Of Multiple Distribution Systems For Financial Services: The Case Of Property-Liability Insurance, Allen N. Berger, J. David Cummins, Mary A. Weiss
Faculty Publications
Property-liability insurance is distributed through a direct-writer system, where agents represent one insurer, and an independent- agency system, where agents represent several insurers. Independent-agency insurers have higher costs than direct writers. The market- imperfections hypothesis attributes the coexistence of the two types of insurers to impediments to competition, while the product-quality hypothesis holds that independent-agency insurers provide higher-quality services. We measure cost efficiency and profit efficiency for property-liability insurers and find strong support for the product-quality hypothesis, implying that independent-agency insurers produce higher-quality outputs and are compensated by higher revenues.