An Evaluation of the Degree of Competition in the French Life Insurance Industry

Philippe Gagnepain and Marc Ivaldi

No 16-697, TSE Working Papers from Toulouse School of Economics (TSE)

Abstract: This article focuses on the life insurance industry in France and attempts to shed light on whether the insurers behave in a competitive fashion, or whether, on the contrary, they take coordinated decisions. We propose several empirical tests, which entail the estimation of the Boone indicator, a tool which explores the relationship between firms’ relative costs and profits, the evaluation of the switching costs beard by consumers when they decide to change insurer, and the construction of a structural model, which is based on an oligopolistic framework where insurers propose differentiated products. Our results suggest unambiguously that firms do follow a competitive behavior.

Date: 2016-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com and nep-ias
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tse:wpaper:30840

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