IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbfina/v34y2010i7p1549-1563.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are publicly held firms less efficient? Evidence from the US property-liability insurance industry

Author

Listed:
  • Xie, Xiaoying

Abstract

This paper studies the performance of publicly held firms in the US property-liability insurance industry by analyzing companies that issued initial public offerings (IPOs) from 1994 to 2005, using private firms as the benchmark. I investigate ex ante determinants and ex post effects of IPOs on firm efficiency, operating performance, and other financials. I also analyze stock returns and follow-on SEO and acquisition activities to provide further information on IPO motivation. The paper finds that the likelihood of an IPO significantly increases with firm size and premium growth. IPO firms experience no post-issue underperformance in efficiency, operations, or stock returns; register improvement in allocative and cost efficiency; and reduce financial leverage and reinsurance usage. Moreover, IPO firms are active in follow-on SEO issues and acquisition activities. The findings are mostly consistent with the theory that firms go public for easier access to capital and to ease capital constraints.

Suggested Citation

  • Xie, Xiaoying, 2010. "Are publicly held firms less efficient? Evidence from the US property-liability insurance industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(7), pages 1549-1563, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:34:y:2010:i:7:p:1549-1563
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378-4266(10)00016-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cummins, J. David & Xie, Xiaoying, 2008. "Mergers and acquisitions in the US property-liability insurance industry: Productivity and efficiency effects," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 30-55, January.
    2. Mikkelson, Wayne H. & Partch, M. Megan & Shah, Kshitij, 1997. "Ownership and operating performance of companies that go public," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 281-307, June.
    3. Loughran, Tim & Ritter, Jay R, 1995. "The New Issues Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(1), pages 23-51, March.
    4. Hsuan‐Chi Chen & Jay R. Ritter, 2000. "The Seven Percent Solution," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1105-1131, June.
    5. Cummins, J. David & Tennyson, Sharon & Weiss, Mary A., 1999. "Consolidation and efficiency in the US life insurance industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(2-4), pages 325-357, February.
    6. Jay R. Ritter & Ivo Welch, 2002. "A Review of IPO Activity, Pricing, and Allocations," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(4), pages 1795-1828, August.
    7. Luigi Zingales, 1995. "Insider Ownership and the Decision to Go Public," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(3), pages 425-448.
    8. Leland, Hayne E & Pyle, David H, 1977. "Informational Asymmetries, Financial Structure, and Financial Intermediation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 371-387, May.
    9. Krupa S. Viswanathan, 2006. "The Pricing of Insurer Demutualization Initial Public Offerings," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 73(3), pages 439-468, September.
    10. Thomas J. Chemmanur & Shan He & Debarshi K. Nandy, 2010. "The Going-Public Decision and the Product Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(5), pages 1855-1908.
    11. Ljungqvist, Alexander & Boehmer, Ekkehart, 2004. "On the decision to go public: Evidence from privately-held firms," Discussion Paper Series 1: Economic Studies 2004,16, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    12. Colaco, Hugh M.J. & Ghosh, Chinmoy & Knopf, John D. & Teall, John L., 2009. "IPOs, clustering, indirect learning and filing independently," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(11), pages 2070-2079, November.
    13. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:2:p:773-784 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Banker, Rajiv D. & Chang, Hsihui & Cooper, William W., 2004. "A simulation study of DEA and parametric frontier models in the presence of heteroscedasticity," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 153(3), pages 624-640, March.
    15. J. Cummins & Hongmin Zi, 1998. "Comparison of Frontier Efficiency Methods: An Application to the U.S. Life Insurance Industry," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 131-152, October.
    16. repec:bla:jfinan:v:44:y:1989:i:2:p:421-49 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Maksimovic, Vojislav & Pichler, Pegaret, 2001. "Technological Innovation and Initial Public Offerings," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(2), pages 459-494.
    18. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    19. Krupa S. Viswanathan & J. David Cummins, 2003. "Ownership Structure Changes in the Insurance Industry: An Analysis of Demutualization," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 70(3), pages 401-437, September.
    20. Faccio, Mara & McConnell, John J. & Stolin, David, 2006. "Returns to Acquirers of Listed and Unlisted Targets," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(1), pages 197-220, March.
    21. Jain, Bharat A & Kini, Omesh, 1994. "The Post-Issue Operating Performance of IPO Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(5), pages 1699-1726, December.
    22. Smith, Abbie J., 1990. "Corporate ownership structure and performance *1: The case of management buyouts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 143-164, September.
    23. Holmstrom, Bengt & Tirole, Jean, 1993. "Market Liquidity and Performance Monitoring," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(4), pages 678-709, August.
    24. Gene C. Lai & Michael J. McNamara & Tong Yu, 2008. "The Wealth Effect of Demutualization: Evidence From the U.S. Property‐Liability and Life Insurance Industries," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 75(1), pages 125-144, March.
    25. Chemmanur, Thomas J & Fulghieri, Paolo, 1999. "A Theory of the Going-Public Decision," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(2), pages 249-279.
    26. Kao, Jennifer L. & Wu, Donghui & Yang, Zhifeng, 2009. "Regulations, earnings management, and post-IPO performance: The Chinese evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 63-76, January.
    27. Ritter, Jay R., 1987. "The costs of going public," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 269-281, December.
    28. Ritter, Jay R, 1991. "The Long-run Performance of Initial Public Offerings," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 3-27, March.
    29. Adams, Brian & Carow, Kenneth A. & Perry, Tod, 2009. "Earnings management and initial public offerings: The case of the depository industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(12), pages 2363-2372, December.
    30. J. Cummins & Gregory Nini, 2002. "Optimal Capital Utilization by Financial Firms: Evidence from the Property-Liability Insurance Industry," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 21(1), pages 15-53, February.
    31. Leuz, Christian & Triantis, Alexander & Yue Wang, Tracy, 2008. "Why do firms go dark? Causes and economic consequences of voluntary SEC deregistrations," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2-3), pages 181-208, August.
    32. Degeorge, Francois & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1993. "The Reverse LBO Decision and Firm Performance: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(4), pages 1323-1348, September.
    33. Friesen, Geoffrey C. & Swift, Christopher, 2009. "Overreaction in the thrift IPO aftermarket," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(7), pages 1285-1298, July.
    34. Scott Harrington & Greg Niehaus, 2002. "Capital Structure Decisions in the Insurance Industry: Stocks versus Mutuals," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 21(1), pages 145-163, February.
    35. Kaplan, Steven, 1989. "The effects of management buyouts on operating performance and value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 217-254.
    36. Lerner, Joshua, 1994. "Venture capitalists and the decision to go public," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 293-316, June.
    37. Murray Carlson & Adlai Fisher & Ron Giammarino, 2006. "Corporate Investment and Asset Price Dynamics: Implications for SEO Event Studies and Long‐Run Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1009-1034, June.
    38. Allen, Franklin & Faulhaber, Gerald R., 1989. "Signalling by underpricing in the IPO market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 303-323, August.
    39. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:1:p:27-64 is not listed on IDEAS
    40. Benninga, Simon & Helmantel, Mark & Sarig, Oded, 2005. "The timing of initial public offerings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 115-132, January.
    41. Alavi, Arash & Pham, Peter Kien & Pham, Toan My, 2008. "Pre-IPO ownership structure and its impact on the IPO process," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(11), pages 2361-2375, November.
    42. James C. Brau & Stanley E. Fawcett, 2006. "Initial Public Offerings: An Analysis of Theory and Practice," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(1), pages 399-436, February.
    43. J. David Cummins & Mary A. Weiss & Hongmin Zi, 1999. "Organizational Form and Efficiency: The Coexistence of Stock and Mutual Property-Liability Insurers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 45(9), pages 1254-1269, September.
    44. Rajiv D. Banker, 1993. "Maximum Likelihood, Consistency and Data Envelopment Analysis: A Statistical Foundation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(10), pages 1265-1273, October.
    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. Xie, Xiaoying & Wang, Yuling & Zhao, Guiqin & Lu, Weili, 2017. "Cash holdings between public and private insurers ‒ a partial adjustment approach," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 80-97.
    2. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2013_014 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Laokulrach Marisa, 2019. "Operating performance of SMEs in Thailand after going public," Management & Marketing, Sciendo, vol. 14(1), pages 1-13, March.
    4. Licheng Jin & Gene Lai & Chia-Ling Ho, 2022. "An analysis of post-demutualisation in the property–liability insurance industry," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 47(2), pages 279-320, April.
    5. Tarun Kumar Soni & Akshita Arora & Thi Le, 2022. "Firm-Specific Determinants of Firm Performance in the Hospitality Sector in India," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-16, December.
    6. Xin Che & Stephen G. Fier & Andre P. Liebenberg, 2019. "The effect of predation risk on cash holdings: Empirical evidence from the U.S. property‐liability insurance industry," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 22(3), pages 329-358, September.
    7. Chrysovalantis Gaganis & Iftekhar Hasan & Fotios Pasiouras, 2013. "Efficiency and stock returns: evidence from the insurance industry," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 429-442, December.
    8. Hamid Reza Mohammadi Ojan & Mohammad Karimi & Ebrahim Kardgar & Mehdi Ahrari, 2018. "The Extraction of Influencing Indicators for Scoring of Insurance Companies Branches Based on GMDH Neural Network," Iranian Economic Review (IER), Faculty of Economics,University of Tehran.Tehran,Iran, vol. 22(2), pages 527-556, Spring.
    9. Kaffash, Sepideh & Azizi, Roza & Huang, Ying & Zhu, Joe, 2020. "A survey of data envelopment analysis applications in the insurance industry 1993–2018," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 284(3), pages 801-813.
    10. Chung-Chu Chuang & Yu-Chieh Tang, 2015. "Asymmetric Dependence between Efficiency and Market Power in the Taiwanese Life Insurance Industry," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 62(4), pages 511-525, September.

    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. Mayur, Manas & Kumar, Manoj, 2006. "An Empirical Investigation of Going Public Decision of Indian Companies," MPRA Paper 1801, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Lee, Chien-Chiang & Ning, Shaolin & Hsieh, Meng-Fen & Lee, Chi-Chuan, 2020. "The going-public decision and rent-seeking activities: Evidence from Chinese private companies," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 44(1).
    3. &Lubos Pástor & Lucian A. Taylor & Pietro Veronesi, 2009. "Entrepreneurial Learning, the IPO Decision, and the Post-IPO Drop in Firm Profitability," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(8), pages 3005-3046, August.
    4. Dario Salerno, 2021. "The Impact of Initial Public Offerings on Firms’ Performance: Disentangling Treatment from Self-Selection Effects," Journal of Applied Finance & Banking, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 11(4), pages 1-1.
    5. Belén Gill de Albornoz & Peter F. Pope, 2004. "The Determinants Of The Going Public Decision: Evidence From The U.K," Working Papers. Serie AD 2004-22, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    6. Thomas J. Chemmanur & Shan He & Debarshi K. Nandy, 2010. "The Going-Public Decision and the Product Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(5), pages 1855-1908.
    7. Chemmanur, Thomas J. & He, Jie, 2011. "IPO waves, product market competition, and the going public decision: Theory and evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 382-412, August.
    8. Franck Bancel & Usha R. Mittoo, 2013. "Survey evidence: what do we know about European and US firms’ motivations for going public?," Chapters, in: Mario Levis & Silvio Vismara (ed.), Handbook of Research on IPOs, chapter 3, pages 57-75, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Jirapun Chorruk & Andrew Worthington, 2010. "Firm-specific determinants and outcomes of initial public offerings in Thailand, 2001â 2007," Discussion Papers in Finance finance:201002, Griffith University, Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics.
    10. Gian Luca Clementi, "undated". "Ipos and The Growth of Firms," GSIA Working Papers 2002-E8, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
    11. Helbing, Pia, 2019. "A review on IPO withdrawal," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 200-208.
    12. Meles, Antonio & Salerno, Dario, 2020. "Abnormal operating performance in IPOs: Does public float matter?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    13. Maghyereh, Aktham I. & Awartani, Basel, 2018. "The factors influencing the decision to list on Abu Dhabi securities exchange," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 89-103.
    14. Jeon, Jin Q. & Lee, Cheolwoo & Nasser, Tareque & Via, M. Tony, 2015. "Multiple lead underwriter IPOs and firm visibility," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 128-149.
    15. Otchere, Isaac & Owusu-Antwi, George & Mohsni, Sana, 2013. "Why are stock exchange IPOs so underpriced and yet outperform in the long run?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 76-98.
    16. Jean Helwege & J. Nellie Liang, 2003. "Initial public offerings in hot and cold markets," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2003-04, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    17. Datta, Sudip & Gruskin, Mark & Iskandar-Datta, Mai, 2015. "On post-IPO stock price performance: A comparative analysis of RLBOs and IPOs," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 187-203.
    18. Otgontsetseg Erhemjamts & J. Tyler Leverty, 2010. "The Demise of the Mutual Organizational Form: An Investigation of the Life Insurance Industry," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(6), pages 1011-1036, September.
    19. Reber, Beat & Vencappa, Dev, 2016. "Deliberate premarket underpricing and aftermarket mispricing: New insights on IPO pricing," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 18-33.
    20. Subadar Agathee, Ushad & Brooks, Chris & Sannassee, Raja Vinesh, 2012. "Hot and cold IPO markets: The case of the Stock Exchange of Mauritius," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 168-192.

    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:eee:jbfina:v:34:y:2010:i:7:p:1549-1563. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf .

    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.