法律环境差异会影响财险市场发展吗?——来自中国省际面板数据的检验

Does Legal Environment Difference Have Impact on Property Insurance Market Development? ——Evidence from Chinese Provincial Panel Data

理论研究和实证证据都表明法制环境对金融市场发展存在显著影响，但是关于法制环境是否影响保险市场发展的研究较少。基于1997。2009年的中国省际面板数据开展法制环境影响财产保险市场的实证研究表明，在控制各省份经济规模、城市化水平、收入差距以及风险偏好的基础上，法制环境的改善对于财险市场的发展具有显著的促进作用。进一步引入财险赔付率作为控制变量后上述实证结果仍然成立。增强了实证结论的稳健性。该研究对于我国通过改善法律环境来促进财险市场的发展具有重要的政策意义。

This paper explores the linkage between legal environment differences and property insurance market development in China during the period of 1997 to 2009. After controlling for individual provincial economy scale, urbanization level, income gap and risk preference, we mainly focus on whether the legal environment index has an effect on the development of property insurance market. Then we introduce property insurance loss ratio into the model specification as a new control variable to conduct a robustness examination. Our results show a strong positive relationship between the protection of property rights and the development of property insurance market. Though the effect is robust enough in 1997-2009, it has weakened after 2006. This paper thus provides a new evidence for researches related to relationship between legal environment and property insurance market based upon Chinese provincial panel data.