Foreign Affiliates of the Largest Insurance Groups: Location‐Specific Advantages

Abstract

This article has two objectives. The first is the documentation of the relative importance of the largest insurance or reinsurance companies in the world and changes that may have occurred in the past 15 years. The second objective is to identify some of the factors that may explain the increased internationalization and most-favored locations of the world's largest insurance groups in transition and developing economies. The results of this study have important implications. First, they indicate that as expected, location-specific factors such as the size of a market, human capital, and good governance do provide an explication of the internationalization of insurance groups. Second, they also show that other factors, such as cultural distance, regulatory barriers, and competitiveness have a significant impact on the choice of countries. Copyright (c) The Journal of Risk and Insurance, 2008.

Investment in Education as a Key Determinant of Agricultural Insurance Growth

“…That is in line with previous studies that use this variable as a proxy for insurance demand (e.g. Moshirian, 1999;Ma & Pope, 2003;Outreville, 2008).…”

Internationalization, Performance and Volatility: The World Largest Financial Groups

“…8 Because of growing competitive pressures, firms prefer internal expansion through internationalization to avoid the concentration of all activities in the local market. Furthermore, in the context of market-seeking investments, internalization advantages and location-specific advantages are important to the explanation of foreign direct investment and the establishment of foreign subsidiaries (Rugman and Verbeke 2004;Claessens and Van Horen 2007;Outreville 2007Outreville , 2008.…”

Non-Linearity Between Life Insurance and Economic Development: A Revisited Approach

“…44 Roe and Siegel (2011). 45 Outreville (2007Outreville ( , 2008 increase in the quality of the institutions is less relevant if the institutions are already quite healthy.…”

“…The six indicators are highly correlated, as the minimum correlation coefficient among them is 0.722. Outreville (2008) uses only one variable at a time when evaluating the effect of governance on insurance groups' choice of a location as variables used to measure governance are highly correlated. The results are thus not reported, but available on request.…”