Deregulating Property-Casualty Insurance Pricing: The Case of Workers' Compensation

Anthony Barkume () and John Ruser ()

Journal of Law and Economics, 2001, vol. 44, issue 1, 37-63

Abstract: Property and casualty lines of insurance have traditionally been subject to more regulatory price control than most goods in the U.S. economy. However, beginning in the 1970s, some states began to deregulate these lines of insurance, either dropping mandatory pricing in concert by means of rating bureaus or, additionally, dropping regulatory prior approval of premiums. This paper assesses the impact of rate deregulation in workers' compensation insurance. Besides examining the impact of deregulation on price, we examine effects on injury rates, as rate regulation may have reduced incentives for workplace safety by restricting price differences across risk classes. We find that eliminating both rating bureau pricing and prior approval reduced long-run premiums by 13.7 percent and reduced injury rates at most by 8.2 percent. In contrast, eliminating only rating bureau pricing had small effects. Copyright 2001 by the University of Chicago.

Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/320272 (application/pdf)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlawec:v:44:y:2001:i:1:p:37-63

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Law and Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().