Abstract:
The objective of this research is to study the scale and scope economies of the property and casualty insurance business in Thailand on a sample of 61 companies over the period 1993-1998. The property and casualty insurance industry was stratifies by net written premiums. This study covers four lines of insurance business : fire, hull and cargo, automobile and miscellaneous. A translog cost function and cost share equations are estimated using iterative seemingly unrelated regression method. Data for this study consist of the operation cost, premium and claim by line as proxies of outputs, and labor, physical capital and material, financial capital, and miscellaneous input as proxies of inputs. The results show that property and casualty insurance industry on overall basis and as classified by size have economies of scale. Product-specific scale economies of hull and cargo insurance should increase production more than the other lines. That is the hull and cargo insurance business is still not efficient. The results imply that labor is an important input factor especially agents and brokers. The finding on the scope economies indicates that we observe diseconomies of scope for overall non-life insurance business and two size-stratified companies. It is possible that sharable input factors are not the purpose of cost saving for the property and casualty insurance industry.