Private Health Insurance Status and Utilisation of Dental Services in Australia

This article focuses on the relationship between private insurance status and dental service utilisation in Australia using data between 1995 and 2001. This article employs joint maximum likelihood to estimate models of time since last dental visit treating private ancillary health insurance (PAHI) as endogenous. The sensitivity of results to the choice between two different but related types of instrumental variables is examined. We find robust evidence in both 1995 and 2001 that individuals with a PAHI policy make significantly more frequent dental consultations relative to those without such coverage. A comparison of the 1995 and 2001 results, however, suggests that there has been an increasing role of PAHI in terms of the frequency of dental consultations over time. This seems intuitive given the trends in the price of unsubsidised private dental consultations. In terms of policy, our results suggest that while government measures to increase private health insurance coverage in Australia have been successful to a significant degree, that success may have come at some cost in terms of socio-economic inequality as the privately insured are provided much better access to care and financial protection.

Migration and the right to social security: perceptions of off-farm migrants' rights to social insurance in China's Jiangsu Province

In 2001 China ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. By so doing the national government became legally bound, "to the maximum of its available resources", to achieve "progressively" full realization of the rights specified in the Covenant. Included amongst these entitlements is the "right of everyone to social security, including social insurance". This paper uses data from Jiangsu to examine the extent to which urbanites agree that previously disenfranchised migrants have the same right to social insurance as the urban population. Many urbanites fear that their existing entitlements to social protection will be diluted if social insurance coverage is extended to include new populations. Accordingly, state agencies and the media have sought to promote acceptance of a more positive view of migrant workers than has traditionally prevailed within towns and cities. We find that younger urban residents, urban residents who already have social insurance and urban residents working in the state-owned sector are more likely to agree that migrants have the same right to social insurance as the urban population. © 2007 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Urban social insurance and worker satisfaction in China: Implications for India

This paper draws on a unique survey of urban employees in Jiangsu that was designed to assist analysis of workers' satisfaction with the urban social insurance scheme in China, and sheds light on whether workers in the urban non-state sector are satisfied with the level of social insurance coverage and whether their perceptions compare favourably with workers in the state-owned sector. It also discusses the globalisation and social protection debate in India and draws implications for the Indian experience from both our perception research and China's experience with urban social insurance reform more generally.

Insuring for a crisis: deposit insurance and the GFC, the Australian and New Zealand experience

Deposit insurance schemes were an important element in policy responses to the global financial crisis (GFC). There has been considerable debate about the nature and efficacy of such policy measures in alleviating the fallout from financial crises. The GFC highlighted problems associated with deposit insurance schemes including moral hazard, coverage limits, co-insurance, cross border issues and market distortions. Despite these shortcomings, deposit insurance schemes were able to ameliorate the financial panic experienced and reduce contagion. This paper evaluates the Australian and New Zealand experience with deposit insurance introduced in response to the GFC, and compares this to the OECD experience. It reflects on the performance of deposit insurance schemes considered against the attributes of good policy design, and evaluates the specific problems and strengths encountered during the GFC.

The evolution of the Australian life insurance industry

The life insurance industry in Australia has traditionally been an important source of long term finance for both the public and private sector. However, very little historical analysis has been undertaken into an industry that constitutes a fundamental part of the economy's financial sector. The present climate of deregulation has initiated an irrevocable process of change within the industry. To comprehend the full implications of this change it is necessary to have an understanding of how the industry has evolved. This paper seeks to provide a background account of the growth of the life insurance industry in Australia highlighting the influences that have determined the structure of the industry.

The origins of formal collusion in Australian fire insurance 1870-1920

The market for insurance has become increasingly competitive in recent years. However, it has not always been so. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was characterized by a highly concentrated and tightly controlled oligopolistic market structure. As such, the history of the fire insurance industry provides an interesting case study in the development of collusive behaviour amongst firms. Up to 1897, pricing agreements among firms were generally short-lived, and were followed by periods of intense competition. After this point, an agreement was forged, which proved very resilient to market pressures and formed the basis of premium rate setting until the 1970s. This paper investigates the difference between this agreement and previous efforts to set premium rates, and points to some of the common features of the later compact, which explain its longevity.

Managers' views on ABC in an insurance company: A grounded theory case study

This is an in-depth case study using a grounded theory approach to explore managers’ views of ABC as part of the control system in an insurance company. Relevant issues are allowed to emerge from the data rather than imposing a theoretical framework upon them. Hypotheses are derived rather than confirmed. Issues emerging from this case study include: the relevance of ABC to managers, increased cost awareness coupled with the problem of taking qualitative factors into account, and the existence of different perceptions of managers within the same department. One hypothesis is how an understanding of ABC can affect job satisfaction by influencing the impact of ABC on managers’ actions. In this case study process and non-process managers had different levels of understanding and use of ABC information. A second hypothesis is that how managers view ABC information depends on whether they adopt a personal or an organisational perspective.

Benefits of employee training program : implications for the insurance industry

The decision to commit to the cost of training employees in insurance
organisations of all sizes is similar in nature to the decision by their customers to buy insurance. Both believe it is necessary but each has some reservations about its benefits.

Adaptation and change in the Australian life insurance industry : an historical perspective

In the wake of the deregulation of the financial sector in Australia in the 1980s and 1990s the life insurance industry has undergone a period of rapid change and reorganisation. Part of this adjustment has been the move towards the integration of financial service provision and the rise of bancassurance. This paper investigates the strategies adopted by Australian life insurers as they moved into the increasingly competitive environment triggered by the lifting of government restrictions on banking practices. It compares the approach of life insurers with that adopted in an earlier period of expansion and change. During the 1950s and 1960s an influx of foreign owned insurance companies into the Australian market precipitated the diversification of domestic life insurers into other insurance markets. The catalyst for change in both cases was the change in information costs brought about by the change in the competitive environment. The experience of the Australian life insurance market would suggest that there is a link between changing information costs and changing organisational structures. However this link is circumscribed by the institutional environment.

Control of the Australian life insurance industry: an example of regulatory externalities within the Australian financial sector 1870-1945

The regulatory environment in which the Australian life insurance industry operates has its antecedents in two major periods of legislative intervention. The first established the principle of ‘freedom with disclosure’ in the 1870s, which has since formed the basis of the regulatory approach. In the 1940s, the second refined the concept in the context of a general recognition of an interventionist approach to financial markets. It is suggested that regulation of the life insurance market in Australia came about not in response to problems associated with market failure but in reaction to external influences not directly related to conditions in the Australian life insurance industry. This was impacted not only on the timing of intervention but on the approach taken as well.

Insurance services in multi-agent systems

In a multi-agent environment, there is often the need for an agent to cooperate with others so as to ensure that a given task is achieved timely and cost-effectively. Present agent systems currently maximizes this through mechanisms such as trust and risk assessments. In this paper, we extend this mechanism by introducing the concept of insurance, in which the insurance agents act as a bridge between agents who require resources from others. Unlike traditional systems, agents purchase insurance so as to guarantee to have the requested resources during the task execution time and thus minimize the risk in task failure. The novelty of this proposal is that it ensures agents continuously to exchange resources and to seek maximum expected utility in a dynamic environment at the same time. Our experimental results confirm the feasibility of our approach.

An analysis of the environment as a means of assessing training needs in the Insurance industry in Australia

In the five years leading up to 2002 there were many significant changes in
the insurance industry in Australia that brought about a range of training
needs. These training needs arose from matters as diverse as mergers, increased competition, corporate failures, and legislative changes. This study includes findings from a survey of the insurance industry in Australia in the period 2000·2002 asa means of exploring the importance of the environment (marketplace) in predicting aspects of training needs. The findings demonstrate that an environmental analysis approach to training needs analysis can predict the type of training that organisations will subsequently need to provide, and thus has the potential to produce a more accurate assessment of training needs in the future. The findings also have application to more broadly based businesses operating in the financial services sector of the economy

Integrating insurance services, trust and risk mechanisms into multi-agent systems

In multi-agent systems, there is often the need for an agent to cooperate with others so as to ensure that a given task is achieved timely and cost effectively. Currently multi-agent systems maximize this through mechanisms such as coalition formation, trust and risk assessments, etc. In this paper, we incorporate the concept of insurance with trust and risk mechanisms in multi-agent systems. The novelty of this proposal is that it ensures continuous sharing of resources while encouraging expected utility to be maximized in a dynamic environment. Our experimental results confirm the feasibility of our approach.

Buying and selling with insurance in open multi-agent marketplace

In this paper, we incorporate the insurance concept in buying and selling model for agents to trade in the open multi-agent marketplace. During buying, agents purchase insurance as a method to search for potential sellers and select their partners based on the information provided by insurance agents. During selling, agents purchase insurance as a method to protect themselves against potential risk. The insurance concept greatly simplifies the trading procedure in the open marketplace. The novelty of this proposal is that it ensures a dynamic trading environment while agents continue to seek maximum utility and being fully protected by insurance. Our experimental results confirm the feasibility of our approach.