Advanced Search

Papers Articles Authors Institutions Data (FRED®)

Abstract

French life insurance remained underdeveloped in comparison with other countries during a long period between 1870 and 1939. We show that technical peculiarities of the contracts used and their interaction with macroeconomic fluctuations explain the wide fluctuations we observe in insurance operations. In an industry where the accumulation both of long-lived contracts and reputation is central, it is likely that these fluctuations may have slowed the enlargement of the client population and the increase in managed assets�; nevertheless, we suggest they are not sufficient to explain their long term stagnation. Low returns paid to clients, resulting from very conservative investment strategies, were the main reason for that stagnation, since only those interested by the life-cycle related aspects of insurance contracts continued to put money in these institutions, with most savers investing directly in the market or through State-owned financial institutions. The main reason for such an investment (and then low-growth) strategy is the existence of a set of conservative regulations and a stable oligopoly in the industry from the 1880s onwards. We suggest that established insurance companies were able to impose regulations and barriers to entry blocking the access of competitors to their market, so maintaining a hold on a small but very profitable market.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.delta.ens.fr/abstracts/wp200317.pdf
Our checks indicate that this address may not be valid because: 404 Not Found. If this is indeed the case, please notify ()
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by DELTA (Ecole normale supérieure) in its series DELTA Working Papers with number 2003-17.

as HTML HTML with abstract plain text plain text with abstract BibTeX RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite) ReDIF in new window

Length:
Date of creation: 2003
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:del:abcdef:2003-17

Contact details of provider:
Postal: 48 boulevard Jourdan - 75014 Paris
Phone: 01 43 13 63 00
Fax: 01 43 13 63 10
Email:
Web page: http://www.delta.ens.fr/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

• NEP-EEC-2003-09-14 (European Economics)
• NEP-IAS-2003-09-14 (Insurance Economics)

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as HTML HTML with abstract plain text plain text with abstract BibTeX RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite) ReDIF in new window

1. Hautcoeur, P. C. & Sicsic, P., 1998. "Threat of a capital levy, expected devaluation and interest rates in France during the interwar period," DELTA Working Papers 98-01, DELTA (Ecole normale supérieure).
   
   • Hautcoeur, Pierre-Cyrille & Sicsic, Pierre, 1999. "Threat of a capital levy, expected devaluation and interest rates in France during the interwar period," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(01), pages 25-56, April.
   • Hautcoeur, P-C. & Sicsic, P., 1998. "Threat of a Capital Levy, Expected Devaluation and Interest Rates in France during the Interwar Period," Working papers 50, Banque de France.

Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:del:abcdef:2003-17

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

---

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.

Privacy Legal