Title
Prof. Dr.
Last Name
Biener
First name
Christian
Email
christian.biener@unisg.ch
ORCID
Phone
+41 71 224 7981
Homepage
Google Scholar
1 - 10 of 33
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PublicationRecovery Mode: Non-Cognitive Skills After the StormWe analyze the very short-term causal impact of exposure to one of the most powerful storms ever recorded to strike land on locus of control, beliefs in reciprocity, and risk preferences within a sample of 2,352 individuals. We find that people exhibit significantly lower external locus of control, beliefs in reciprocity, and risk aversion after the shock. Our identification is based on field work that coincidentally started shortly before the typhoon and that continued thereafter. The short-term impact we document has not been observed previously, and we thus fill a gap in the emerging literature on the stability of non-cognitive skills.Type:Journal:Volume:
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PublicationMore Options, More Problems? Lost in the Health Insurance Maze( 2023)
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PublicationGlobalization of Insurance Companies: A Blessing or a Curse?A central debate in international business is whether there is a relationship between internationalisation and firm performance, and if so, what its shape and contingent factors are. We use a sample of European insurance companies to show that industry context and cost efficiency are contingent factors of this relationship. Life insurers, particularly those focusing on cost leadership, exhibit a negative impact of globalisation (G) on firm performance (P). We proxy cost leadership by a novel multidimensional measure of cost efficiency and show that it negatively moderates the G-P relationship in the life insurance industry. In contrast, there is no significant G-P relationship and no cost efficiency moderating effect in the nonlife insurance industry. We attribute these results to the higher liability of foreignness driven by greater distance in the globalisation process and by the greater importance of cost efficiency in life insurance as opposed to nonlife insurance.
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PublicationContract Nonperformance Risk and Uncertainty in Insurance MarketsInsurance contracts may fail to perform, leading to a default on valid claims. We relax the standard assumption of known probabilities for such defaults by allowing for uncertainty. Within a large behavioral experiment, we show that introducing risk and uncertainty each leads to significant reductions in insurance demand and that the effects are comparable in magnitude (17.1 and 14.5 percentage points). Furthermore, risk- and ambiguity-averse participants are affected most. These findings are in line with models incorporating ambiguity attitudes or, alternatively, pessimistic beliefs. An analysis of the belief and decision dynamics suggests persistent pessimistic priors and disregard of peer experiences, leading to a stable uncertainty effect.Type:Journal:Volume:Issue:
Scopus© Citations 10 -
PublicationCan Group Incentives Alleviate Moral Hazard? The Role of Pro-Social PreferencesIncentivizing unobservable effort in risky environments, such as in insurance, credit, and labor markets, is vital as moral hazard may otherwise cause significant welfare losses including the outright failure of markets. Ensuring incentive-compatibility through state-contingent contracts between principal and agent, however, is undesirable for risk-averse agents. We provide a theoretical intuition on how pro-social preferences between agents in a joint liability group con-tract can ensure incentive-compatibility. Two independent large-scale behavioral experiments framed in an insurance context support the hypotheses derived from our theory. In particular, effort decreases when making agents’ payoff less state-dependent, but this effect is mitigated with joint liability in a group scheme where agents are additionally motivated by pro-social concerns. Activating strategic motives slightly increases effort further; particularly in non-anonymous groups with high network strength. The results support existing evidence on joint liability groups and further suggest that even if peer pressure to ensure effort provision is absent, such group policies can improve efficiency when agents are pro-social.
Scopus© Citations 11 -
PublicationThe Structure of the Global Reinsurance Market: An Analysis of Efficiency, Scale, and ScopeWe estimate economies of scale and scope as well as cost and revenue efficiency to explain the structure of the global reinsurance market, where large reinsurers dominate but both diversified and specialized reinsurers are competitive. The costs and benefits of size and product diversification are particularly relevant to the reinsurance industry, as risk diversification is central to the industry's business model. We find that reinsurers with total assets less than USD 2.9 billion exhibit scale economies, while those with total assets greater than USD 15.5 billion do not. Large reinsurers are characterized by high cost efficiency, while small reinsurers exhibit superior efficiency only when specialized. Large reinsurers also exhibit revenue scope economies when operating both life and nonlife reinsurance. Moreover, the evidence is in line with the efficient structure hypothesis: cost-efficient reinsurers can charge lower prices without sacrificing profitability.Type:Journal:Volume:
Scopus© Citations 15 -
PublicationThe Determinants of Efficiency and Productivity in the Swiss Insurance IndustryUsing state-of-the-art frontier efficiency methodologies, we study the efficiency and productivity of Swiss insurance companies in the life, property/casualty, and reinsurance sectors from 1997-2013. In this context, we provide the first empirical analysis of internationalization strategies of insurance companies, a topic of high interest in the business and economics literature, but one that has to date not been the focus of efficiency studies in the insurance sector. We find that productivity and efficiency have improved with regard to property/casualty and reinsurance. In the case of life insurance, productivity and efficiency diminished; however, life insurance firms with higher levels of international business exhibit superior efficiency levels. We observe that diversification strategies directed to the European market are more beneficial compared to those targeting markets outside of Europe.Type:Journal:Volume:Issue:
Scopus© Citations 69 -
PublicationRecent Research Developments Affecting Nonlife Insurance : The CAS Risk Premium Project 2013 UpdateThis article reports the main results of the 2013 Risk Premium Project update, a yearly review of actuarial and finance literature on the theory and empirics of risk assessment for property-casualty insurance. The literature review reveals a broad variety of topics, with a strong leaning toward catastrophe risk, market efficiency, and new valuation techniques. Within the field of catastrophe risk, the role of weather and climate-related risks for the insurance sector is reviewed and both the threats and the opportunities arising from the changing risk landscape are discussed.
Scopus© Citations 1 -
PublicationInsurability of Cyber Risk: An Empirical AnalysisThis paper discusses the adequacy of insurance for managing cyber risk. To this end, we extract 994 cases of cyber losses from an operational risk database and analyse their statistical properties. Based on the empirical results and recent literature, we investigate the insurability of cyber risk by systematically reviewing the set of criteria introduced by Berliner (1982). Our findings emphasise the distinct characteristics of cyber risks compared with other operational risks and bring to light significant problems resulting from highly interrelated losses, lack of data and severe information asymmetries. These problems hinder the development of a sustainable cyber insurance market. We finish by discussing how cyber risk exposure may be better managed and make several sug-gestions for future research.
Scopus© Citations 166