近日，我院李起铨副教授与南昌大学Chien-Chiang Lee教授、台湾静宜大学的Chun-Wei Lin副教授合作，于国际知名期刊《日内瓦风险与保险论文-问题与实践》（The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice）发表论文《The impact of peer effects and economic policy-related uncertainty on U.S. life insurers’ investment decisions》。该文是第一个同时考察同行企业评估与经济政策不确定性对保险公司的投资行为影响的实证研究，为了获得更多的信息，该文建立了一个扩展模型来分析在经济危机时期，政府的危机干预政策是否会改变经济政策不确定性对企业投资的影响效果。实证结果表明美国寿险公司的投资决策与同行的投资决策显着正相关，支持同行学习渠道假说；当国家的经济政策确定性较高时，保险公司更可能降低投资，支持等待观望假说；此外，在危机发生期间，政府提供的流动性支持和国有化政策对保险公司的投资决策具有激励作用。

李起铨博士是西南财经大学发展研究院的副教授，主要研究方向为能源经济、宏观经济、金融市场与金融机构等跨学科交叉领域研究，李起铨博士的研究成果主要发表于《Energy Economics》、《Energy》、《Technological and Economic Development of Economy》、《Journal of International Money and Finance》、《Journal of Financial Stability》、《Journal of Futures Markets》等国际知名学术刊物上，担任多篇国际期刊论文审稿人。

论文摘要：

This paper examines the impact of peer evaluation and economic policy-related uncertainty on insurers’ investment decisions in the U.S. life insurance industry. Using data from 567 U.S. life insurers, we find that U.S. life insurers’ investment decisions are significantly positively associated with peer insurers’ investment decisions, consistent with the learning peer channel hypothesis. In addition, we find that when the country’s economic policy-related uncertainty is higher, insurance firms are more likely to lower their investment, which supports the wait-and-see hypothesis. We further investigate the effect of government crisis interventions on life insurer investment, considering policy-related uncertainty. The results indicate that liquidity support and nationalization policies encourage insurers’ investment decisions. We also perform alternative checks to address endogeneity concerns. The results mostly support our earlier findings. However, the results on the sensitivity of investment to peer effects and policy-related uncertainty vary. The results are robust to controls for various attributes, such as insurer characteristics, peer insurer characteristics, economic policy-related uncertainty, and government crisis interventions.

论文链接：https://doi.org/10.1057/s41288-020-00178-3