Altuntas, Muhammed
[VerfasserIn]
;
Berry-Stölzle, Thomas
[Sonstige Person, Familie und Körperschaft];
Wende, Sabine
[Sonstige Person, Familie und Körperschaft]
Does One Size Fit All? Determinants of Insurer Capital Structure Around the Globe
Anmerkungen:
In: Journal of Banking and Finance, Forthcoming
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments October 11, 2014 erstellt
Beschreibung:
As financial markets become more global, the question arises whether any country specific considerations are still relevant for insurance companies' capital structure. This research examines this questions with firm-level data across a broad range of countries including those in developing markets. What we find is that the optimal capital structure of insurance companies is not homogeneous across countries. We find that country-level factors explain a substantial fraction of the cross-sectional variation in insurance companies' capitalization levels. Our results add to the current policy discussion on global regulatory capital requirements. If insurer capital structure is not homogeneous across countries, a global capital standard – if desired – should take differences in the institutional environments across countries into account to avoid market distortions