Is the Market Classification of Risk Always Efficient? - Evidence from German Third Party Motor Insurance

This paper studies the empirical effects of risk classification in the mandatory third-party motor insurance of Germany following the European Union’s directive to de-regulate insurance tariffs of 1994. We find evidence that inefficient risk categories had been selected while potentially efficient information was dismissed. Risk classification did generally not improve the efficiency of contracting or the composition of insureds in this market. These findings are partly explained by the continuing existence of institutional restraints in this market such as compulsory fixed coverage and unitary owner insurance.

Post-9/11 Terrorism Threats, News Coverage, and Public Perceptions in the United States

Terrorists, policy-makers, and terrorism scholars have long assumed that the mere threat of terrorist strikes affects societies that have experienced actual acts of terrorism. For this reason, most definitions of terrorism include the threat of violent political acts against civilians. But so far research has neither validated this conventional wisdom nor demonstrated how actual and mass-mediated threat messages by terrorists and terror alerts and threat assessments by government officials affect the public in targeted states. This paper fills the gap providing evidence that who conveys such messages matters and that mass-mediated threat messages by al Qaeda leaders and announced alerts and threat assessments by U.S. administration officials had a significant impact on the American public’s threat perceptions in the post-9/11 years.