Insurance Supply with Capacity Constraints and Endogenous Insolvency Risk

Negative shocks to industry capital and significant capital adjustment costs have been offered as an explanation of periodic "crises" in the property-liability insurance market. According to these capacity constraint models, in which post-shock production must meet a solvency constraint, increases in price can cause some or perhaps all of the cost of a negative shock to capital to be shifted to policyholders. This article develops a model of insurance supply with capacity constraints and endogenous insolvency risk that incorporates limited liability and potential loss of insurer intangible capital. If industry demand is inelastic with respect to price and capital, the model predicts that price will increase following a negative shock to capital, but by less than the amount needed to fully offset the shock. Equity value and the expected recovery by policyholders for post-shock production are predicted to decline. Elastic demand mitigates shock-induced price increases.