IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/fziddp/200904.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Intermediation and matching in insurance markets

Author

Listed:
  • Focht, Uwe
  • Richter, Andreas
  • Schiller, Jörg

Abstract

This paper addresses the role of independent insurance intermediaries in markets where matching is important. A controversial matter in the discussion concerning insurance intermediation is the issue of compensation customs and how the latter affect prices, rents and advice quality in insurance markets. This work compares a fee-based with a commission-based system. We show that in a situation with a non-strategic intermediary both remuneration systems are payoff-equivalent. In a second step, allowing for strategic behavior, we discuss the impact of remuneration on the quality of advice. The analysis shows that the possibility of mismatching can provide the intermediary with substantial market power which however does not translate into mismatching as long as consumers have rational expectations. We offer a rationale for the use of contingent commissions. In addition, this paper addresses whether or not the recent ban of any commission payments as introduced in countries such as Denmark and Finland is an appropriate market intervention.

Suggested Citation

  • Focht, Uwe & Richter, Andreas & Schiller, Jörg, 2009. "Intermediation and matching in insurance markets," FZID Discussion Papers 04-2009, University of Hohenheim, Center for Research on Innovation and Services (FZID).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:fziddp:200904
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/27760/1/604861737.PDF
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Varian, Hal R, 1980. "A Model of Sales," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(4), pages 651-659, September.
    2. G. M.P. Swann, 2009. "The Economics of Innovation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13211.
    3. J. David Cummins & Neil A. Doherty, 2006. "The Economics of Insurance Intermediaries," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 73(3), pages 359-396, September.
    4. Bolton, Patrick & Freixas, Xavier & Shapiro, Joel, 2007. "Conflicts of interest, information provision, and competition in the financial services industry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 297-330, August.
    5. Schultz, Christian, 2004. "Market transparency and product differentiation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 173-178, May.
    6. Gary Biglaiser, 1993. "Middlemen as Experts," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 24(2), pages 212-223, Summer.
    7. Schultz, Christian, 2005. "Transparency on the consumer side and tacit collusion," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 279-297, February.
    8. Hofmann, Annette & Nell, Martin, 2008. "The impact of intermediary remuneration in differentiated insurance markets," Working Papers on Risk and Insurance 22, University of Hamburg, Institute for Risk and Insurance.
    9. Regan, Laureen & Tennyson, Sharon, 1996. "Agent Discretion and the Choice of Insurance Marketing System," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(2), pages 637-666, October.
    10. Yavas, Abdullah, 1994. "Middlemen in Bilateral Search Markets," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(3), pages 406-429, July.
    11. d'Aspremont, C & Gabszewicz, Jean Jaskold & Thisse, J-F, 1979. "On Hotelling's "Stability in Competition"," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(5), pages 1145-1150, September.
    12. Hugh Gravelle, 1993. "Product Price and Advice Quality: Implications of the Commission System in Life Assurance," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 18(1), pages 31-53, June.
    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. Pinar Karaca-Mandic & Roger Feldman & Peter Graven, 2013. "The Role of Agents and Brokers in the Market for Health Insurance," Working Papers 13-58, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    2. Banyár, József & Regős, Gábor, 2012. "Paradoxical price effects on insurance markets," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 1399-1407.
    3. Annika Pape, 2014. "Miscounselling in the German Insurance Market—Utility-Orientated Implications for the Meaning of Miscounselling," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 37(4), pages 561-582, December.
    4. Dan Constantin Dănuleţiu & Adina Elena Dănuleţiu, 2011. "Trends And Challenges Of Romanian Brokerage Insurance Market," Annales Universitatis Apulensis Series Oeconomica, Faculty of Sciences, "1 Decembrie 1918" University, Alba Iulia, vol. 2(13), pages 1-24.
    5. Annika Pape, 2014. "Liability Rule Failures? Evidence from German Court Decisions," Working Paper Series in Economics 300, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    6. Pinar Karaca-Mandic & Roger Feldman & Peter Graven, 2013. "The Role of Agents and Brokers in the Market for Health Insurance," NBER Working Papers 19342, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Uwe Focht & Andreas Richter & Jörg Schiller, 2013. "Intermediation and (Mis-)Matching in Insurance Markets—Who Should Pay the Insurance Broker?," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 80(2), pages 329-350, June.
    2. Hofmann, Annette & Nell, Martin, 2008. "The impact of intermediary remuneration in differentiated insurance markets," Working Papers on Risk and Insurance 22, University of Hamburg, Institute for Risk and Insurance.
    3. Focht, Uwe & Richter, Andreas & Schiller, Jörg, 2006. "Intermediation, compensation and tacit collusion in insurance markets," Working Papers on Risk and Insurance 17, University of Hamburg, Institute for Risk and Insurance.
    4. Brekke, Kurt R. & Nuscheler, Robert & Straume, Odd Rune, 2007. "Gatekeeping in health care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 149-170, January.
    5. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899, January.
    6. Xu, Lili & Matsumura, Toshihiro, 2023. "Market transparency in a mixed oligopoly," MPRA Paper 118415, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Schultz, Christian, 2009. "Transparency and product variety," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 102(3), pages 165-168, March.
    8. Byung‐Cheol Kim & Jay Pil Choi, 2010. "Customer Information Sharing: Strategic Incentives and New Implications," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(2), pages 403-433, June.
    9. Martina Eckardt & Solvig Räthke‐Döppner, 2010. "The Quality of Insurance Intermediary Services—Empirical Evidence for Germany," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 77(3), pages 667-701, September.
    10. Boone, Jan & Pottersz, Jan, 2006. "Transparency and prices with imperfect substitutes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 93(3), pages 398-404, December.
    11. KNAUFF, Malgorzata, 2006. "Market transparency and Bertrand competition," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2006037, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    12. Elisa Baraibar‐Diez & María D. Odriozola & José Luis Fernández Sánchez, 2017. "A Survey of Transparency: An Intrinsic Aspect of Business Strategy," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 480-489, May.
    13. Nelson Granados & Alok Gupta & Robert J. Kauffman, 2010. "Research Commentary---Information Transparency in Business-to-Consumer Markets: Concepts, Framework, and Research Agenda," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 21(2), pages 207-226, June.
    14. Charlene Cosandier & Filomena Garcia & Malgorzata Knauff, 2018. "Price competition with differentiated goods and incomplete product awareness," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 66(3), pages 681-705, October.
    15. Schuler, Sebastian, 2020. "Capping Commissions in the Presence of Price Competition," MPRA Paper 104867, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Rasch, Alexander & Herre, Jesko, 2013. "Customer-side transparency, elastic demand, and tacit collusion under differentiation," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 51-59.
    17. Defever, Fabrice & Imbruno, Michele & Kneller, Richard, 2020. "Trade liberalization, input intermediaries and firm productivity: Evidence from China," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    18. Byford, Martin C., 2015. "A theoretical foundation for the undercut-proof equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 209-220.
    19. Moscarini, Giuseppe & Ottaviani, Marco, 2001. "Price Competition for an Informed Buyer," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 457-493, December.
    20. De Fraja, Gianni & Sákovics, József, 2012. "Exclusive nightclubs and lonely hearts columns: Non-monotone participation in optional intermediation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 618-632.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    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:zbw:fziddp:200904. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fihohde.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.