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TITLE
"Relative Market Power versus Concentration as Measures of
Market Dominance: Property and Liability Insurance," Journal
of Insurance Issues, Edward Nissan, Fall 2003,
Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 129-141. Entire
article in Acrobat format.
ABSTRACT
This
paper utilizes a rank-size function to investigate market concentration in lieu
of well-known measures. For
comparison, two measures were chosen: Theil's entropy and the Herfindahl.
The empirical results are based on premiums written for twelve lines of
property and liability insurance. While
the two concentration measures rank the lines for the level of concentration in
almost complete unanimity, the empirical results indicate that the ranking
breaks down for the rank-size function. This
important finding gives substantial strength to advocates of the market share as
measure of market power as opposed to the market concentration measure.
[Keywords: Market
Power; P-L Insurance; Theil's entropy; Market share]
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