IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/4098.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does insurance market activity promote economic growth ? Country study for industrial and developing countries

Author

Listed:
  • Arena, Marco

Abstract

Insurance market activity, both as a financial intermediary and a provider of risk transfer and indemnification, may contribute to economic growth by allowing different risks to be managed more efficiently and by mobilizing domestic savings. During the past decade, there has been faster growth in insurance market activity, particularly in emerging markets given the process of liberalization and financial integration, which raises questions about its impact on economic growth. The author tests whether there is a causal relationship between insurance market activity (life and nonlife insurance) and economic growth. Using the generalized method of moments for dynamic models of panel data for 56 countries and for the 1976-2004 period, he finds robust evidence of a causal relationship between insurance market activity and economic growth. Both life and nonlife insurance have a positive and significant causal effect on economic growth. High-income countries drive the results in the case of life insurance. On the other hand, both high-income and developing countries drive the results in the case of nonlife insurance.

Suggested Citation

  • Arena, Marco, 2006. "Does insurance market activity promote economic growth ? Country study for industrial and developing countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4098, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4098
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2006/12/14/000016406_20061214120343/Rendered/PDF/wps4098.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Levine, Ross & Zervos, Sara, 1998. "Stock Markets, Banks, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 537-558, June.
    2. Ross Levine & Norman Loayza & Thorsten Beck, 2002. "Financial Intermediation and Growth: Causality and Causes," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Leonardo Hernández & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel (Se (ed.),Banking, Financial Integration, and International Crises, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 2, pages 031-084, Central Bank of Chile.
    3. Robert G. King & Ross Levine, 1993. "Finance and Growth: Schumpeter Might Be Right," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(3), pages 717-737.
    4. King, Robert G. & Levine, Ross, 1993. "Finance, entrepreneurship and growth: Theory and evidence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 513-542, December.
    5. Levine, Ross, 1998. "The Legal Environment, Banks, and Long-Run Economic Growth," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 30(3), pages 596-613, August.
    6. Arellano, Manuel & Bover, Olympia, 1995. "Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 29-51, July.
    7. Levine, Ross, 2005. "Finance and Growth: Theory and Evidence," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 865-934, Elsevier.
    8. Levine, Ross, 1999. "Law, Finance, and Economic Growth," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 8(1-2), pages 8-35, January.
    9. Beck, Thorsten & Levine, Ross, 2001. "Stock markets, banks, and growth : correlation or causality?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2670, The World Bank.
    10. Impavido, Gregorio & Musalem, Alberto R. & Tressel, Thierry, 2003. "The impact of contractual savings institutions on securities markets," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2948, The World Bank.
    11. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sumninder Kaur Bawa & Navjeet Kaur, 2014. "An Analysis of Efficiency-Profitability Relationship," Paradigm, , vol. 18(1), pages 51-72, June.
    2. Michael, Bryane & Hartwell, Christopher A. & Ho, Gary, 2013. "Does Financial Market Development Explain (or at Least Predict) the Demand for Wealth Management and Private Banking Services in Developing Markets?," EconStor Preprints 109960, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    3. Rudra P. Pradhan & Saurav Dash & Rana Pratap Maradana & Manju Jayakumar & Kunal Gaurav, 2017. "Insurance market density and economic growth in Eurozone countries: the granger causality approach," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 3(1), pages 1-24, December.
    4. Sabo Mohammed & Junaidu Muhammad Kurawa, 2021. "Board Attributes and Value of Listed Insurance Companies in Nigeria: The Mediating effect of Earnings Quality," International Journal of Management Science and Business Administration, Inovatus Services Ltd., vol. 8(1), pages 7-23, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zouheir Abida & Imen Mohamed Sghaier & Nahed Zghidi, 2015. "Financial Development and Economic Growth: Evidence from North African Countries," Economic Alternatives, University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria, issue 2, pages 17-33, April.
    2. Narayan, Paresh Kumar & Narayan, Seema, 2013. "The short-run relationship between the financial system and economic growth: New evidence from regional panels," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 70-78.
    3. Ghada Barsoum, 2007. "Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey 2006: Report on Methodology and Data Collection," Working Papers 704, Economic Research Forum, revised 01 Jan 2007.
    4. Marco Arena, 2008. "Does Insurance Market Activity Promote Economic Growth? A Cross‐Country Study for Industrialized and Developing Countries," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 75(4), pages 921-946, December.
    5. Beck, Thorsten & Levine, Ross & Loayza, Norman, 2000. "Finance and the sources of growth," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1-2), pages 261-300.
    6. Thorsten Beck, 2009. "The Econometrics of Finance and Growth," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Terence C. Mills & Kerry Patterson (ed.), Palgrave Handbook of Econometrics, chapter 25, pages 1180-1209, Palgrave Macmillan.
    7. Beck, Thorsten & Levine, Ross, 2004. "Stock markets, banks, and growth: Panel evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 423-442, March.
    8. Beck, Thorsten & Levine, Ross, 2001. "Stock markets, banks, and growth : correlation or causality?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2670, The World Bank.
    9. Zhang, Jin & Wang, Lanfang & Wang, Susheng, 2012. "Financial development and economic growth: Recent evidence from China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 393-412.
    10. Smaoui, Houcem & Nechi, Salem, 2017. "Does sukuk market development spur economic growth?," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 136-147.
    11. W.N.W Azman‐Saini & Peter Smith, 2011. "Finance And Growth: New Evidence On The Role Of Insurance," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 79(2), pages 111-127, June.
    12. Laurent Cavenaile & Christian Gengenbach & Franz Palm, 2014. "Stock Markets, Banks and Long Run Economic Growth: A Panel Cointegration-Based Analysis," De Economist, Springer, vol. 162(1), pages 19-40, March.
    13. Hassan Hamadi & Charbel Bassil, 2015. "Financial Development and Economic Growth in the MENA Region," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 57(4), pages 598-622, December.
    14. James B. Ang, 2008. "A Survey Of Recent Developments In The Literature Of Finance And Growth," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(3), pages 536-576, July.
    15. Philip Arestis & Georgios Chortareas & Georgios Magkonis, 2015. "The Financial Development And Growth Nexus: A Meta-Analysis," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 549-565, July.
    16. Umut Oguzoglu & Thanasis Stengos, 2011. "Can Dynamic Panel Data Explain the Finance-Growth Link? An Empirical Likelihood Approach," Review of Economic Analysis, Digital Initiatives at the University of Waterloo Library, vol. 3(2), pages 129-148, October.
    17. Thorsten Beck & Robin Döttling & Thomas Lambert & Mathijs Dijk, 2023. "Liquidity creation, investment, and growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 28(2), pages 297-336, June.
    18. Gründler, Klaus & Weitzel, Jan, 2013. "The financial sector and economic growth in a panel of countries," Discussion Paper Series 123, Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, Chair of Economic Order and Social Policy.
    19. Alberto Bucci & Simone Marsiglio, 2019. "Financial development and economic growth: long‐run equilibrium and transitional dynamics," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 66(3), pages 331-359, July.
    20. Ndikumana, Leonce, 2005. "Financial development, financial structure, and domestic investment: International evidence," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 651-673, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Insurance&Risk Mitigation; Economic Theory&Research; Banks&Banking Reform; Financial Intermediation; Non Bank Financial Institutions;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4098. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.