The restructuring of health insurance contracts and health care delivery systems under managed care is the result of competitive attempts to reduce the inefficiencies that developed in medical markets under traditional indemnity insurance. Liability rules that continue to apply norms of customary care threaten to undermine these potential efficiency gains. Liability rules under managed care sho...

This Essay has two goals: one descriptive and one normative. Descriptively, it explicates the connection between interpretation of insurance contracts and the Insurer’s disclosure duty. Disclosure duties and interpretation rules constitute a two way street. The interpretation of insurance contracts by courts, ex post, influences the incentives of insurance companies to disclose information to c...

We develop a model of capital and liability structure of banks that optimally respond to changes of regulatory environment. The model produces the following results. In the absence of regulation, banks in our model take high leverage, both in the form of deposits and subordinated debt. We find that subordinated debt is important in banks’ liability structure—holding zero subordinated debt is ne...

Parties who cause harm to others may sometimes turn out to be ‘judgment proof,’ that is, unable to pay fully the amount for which they have been found legally liable.’ This possibility is an important and realistic one. Certainly individuals may readily be imagined to cause personal injury or property damage resulting in judgments that exceed their assets plus any liability insurance coverage; ...

In 1990, the AANA Council for Public Interest in Anesthesia (CPIA) in conjunction with Anesthesia Professional Liability Services Inc. and the St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company surveyed AANA members to identify stressors that have the most impact on performance, health, and the risk of a lawsuit. The results were presented that year in the AANA Annual Meeting's keynote address. Among t...

Whether you are an aficionado or completely uninitiated, everyone has an opinion on bull-fighting. The bull-fighter is in constant risk of injury. A medical team made up of surgeons, anesthetists, emergency physicians and nurses remains present throughout the show. For the anaesthetist and surgeon, a wounded bullfighter is an emergency because the vital and functional prognosis are engaged. The...

The property-liability insurance industry has experienced significant turmoil during the past decade. Three related issues have received enormous attention: increases in the frequency and severity of insurance company insolvencies, high and increasing costs of automobile and workers’ compensation coverage, and volatility in prices and in availability of commercial liability insurance coverage. ...

Tobit regression is used to analyze market shares for a cross section of 273 insurers operating in 1990. Lines of business analyzed include personal auto liability and physical damage insurance, homeowners multiperil, commercial general liability, workers compensation, and commercial multiperil. After controlling for size and other factors, evidence indicates that direct writing insurers have c...

During the 1980s and early 1990s, the world insurance market grew substantially. World insurance premiums in 1993 accounted for about 8 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP), compared to 4 percent in 1984. This article explains a substantial proportion of the variation in propertyliability insurance consumption across countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and ...