Information sharing, market competition and antitrust intervention: a lesson from the Italian insurance sector

Abstract

By means of an application of the Rosse-Panzar methodology, we assess the degree of competition in the Italian car insurance market in order to evaluate the considerable fine that is imposed on 39 companies by the Italian Antitrust Authority (IAA) in 2000 for their supposed anticompetitive behaviour due to a longstanding information exchange through a third independent company. Our results show that this group of firms has earned revenues as if under monopoly or collusive oligopoly conditions, therefore endorsing the decision of IAA

ICT, Financial Sector Development and Financial Access

“…The 'quiet of life hypothesis' (QLH) postulates that banks would take advantage of privileged information and positions to increase their profit margins instead of pursuing their fundamental role of financial allocation efficiency (Coccorese & Pellecchia, 2010;Coccorese, 2012;. Hence, we are tempted to infer that African financial institutions may be taking advantage of ICT and related advantages to improve their margins in profit instead of increasing allocation efficiency.…”

Technology-driven information sharing and conditional financial development in Africa

“…The latter has principally been concerned with the influence of stronger creditors' rights in, inter alia: (i) bank risk-taking by Houston et al (2010) and Acharya et al (2011); (ii) bankruptcy with notable works from Claessens and Klapper (2005), Djankov et al (2007) and Brockman and Unlu (2009) and (iii) capital structure by El Ghoul et al (2012). The former strand has been concerned with assessing how reducing information asymmetry: enhances the availability of credit (Djankov et al, 2007;Brown et al, 2009;Triki & Gajigo, 2014); reduces defaulting rates (Jappelli & Pagano, 2002); decreases the cost of credit (Brown et al, 2009); affects antitrust intervention (Coccorese, 2012); influences corrupt lending (Barth et al, 2009) and affects bank loans that are syndicated (Ivashina, 2009;Tanjung et al, 2010).…”

Information Sharing and Financial Sector Development in Africa

“…In essence, one strand has been mainly concerned with the relevance of stronger creditors' rights in: bankruptcy (Claessens & Klapper, 2005;Djankov et al, 2007;Brockman & Unlu, 2009) and risk-taking by banks (Houston et al, 2010;Acharya et al, 2011). The other strand is focused on investigating how mitigating asymmetric information could inter alia: boost financial access (Djankov et al, 2007;Brown et al, 2009;Asongu, 2015;Triki & Gajigo, 2014); mitigate rates of defaults (Jappelli & Pagano, 2002); influence syndicated bank loans (Ivashina, 2009;Tanjung et al, 2010); reduce the cost of credit (Brown et al, 2009); influence corrupt-related lending (Barth et al, 2009) and affect antitrust intervention (Coccorese, 2012).…”