An Empirical Analysis On Economies Of Scale And Scope In China's Insurance Industry

With the full opening of China's financial market, China's insurance industry will become increasingly fierce competition. Efficiency is a concentrated expression of the competitiveness of insurance companies, Insurance companies'economies of scale and scope of economies conditions have important effect on the operating efficiency. Therefore, the study of economies of scale and scope of China's insurance industry ,to a certain extent, has improved the operating efficiency and competitiveness of our insurance agent.In this paper, used the corresponding cost function and measurement methods, we analysised the conditions of China's insurance industry of economies of scale and scope of economies.Firstly,this paper reviewed the study of economies of scale and economies of scope of the insurance industry at home and abroad.and then, the concept of econo- mies of scale and economies of scope of the insurance industry were defined, and introduced the research as applied to the cost function and measurement methods.And then,this study analyzed the causes and effective factors of economies of scale and economies of scope.After some preparing studies mentioned above, according to the characteristics of China's insurance industry to practice to separate operation both the property insurance and the life insurance,this paper divided China's insurance industry into two areas to conduct empirical analysis,which are the life insurance industry and the property insurance industry. In the empirical analysis, used China's insurance industry's panel data for 2002-2007 and translog cost function,We analyzed the economies of scale situation of China's life insurance industry and property Insurance industry.At the same time, used generalized translog cost function,we analyzed the economies of scope situation of China's life insurance industry and property insurance industry. The results showed that: China's life insurance industry coexist economies of scale and diseconomies of scale phenomena, including major insurance companies exist diseconomies of scale, while the small and medium sized insurance companies exist economies of scale. At the same time, most companies extend the weak diseconomies of scope.There are slight economies of scale in the majority of insur- ance companies of the property insurance industry. At the same time there exists an obvious economies of scope in the vast majority of insurance companies. Finally, this paper summarized the researching results,proposed future direction for further research and some policy recommendations.