Competition and Its Variation Over Time: An Empirical Analysis of the Chinese Insurance Industry

We use Chinese insurance market data for the period 2001-2009 to examine the degree of competition in the life and property-liability insurance industries. We show that, during the period 2001-2002, the Chinese life insurance market was under a monopoly, but it has been operating under monopolistic competition since 2003. By contrast, the property-liability insurance market was under a monopoly for the full time period. In addition, our results show that domestic firms compete more actively than foreign firms, and among foreign insurers, there is a clear structural break between firms that have expanded and those that have not. This difference is especially obvious in the property-liability insurance industry. We thus suggest that an implicit geographic restriction could be one of the reasons that foreign firms in China are placed in an inferior position when competing with domestic firms.