Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2608.04925

From Long to Short: How Interest Rates Shape Life Insurance Markets

Ziang Li·Derek Wenning
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

This paper explores how financial institutions pass interest rate risk through to product markets using the life insurance industry as a setting. We show theoretically that it is optimal for insurers to distort product issuance across maturities to offset duration gaps. We examine insurers exogenously exposed to interest rate risk through their variable annuity liabilities after the 2008 financial crisis. Consistent with our mechanism, exposed insurers developed negative duration gaps, increased markups on long-duration products, and rebalanced product issuance toward shorter-duration products to hedge. This response reduced long-duration life insurance coverage by 12.1% of GDP between 2005 and 2023.

Explore related subjects

econ.GNq-fin.EC

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Ziang Li, Derek Wenning. 2026-08-07. From Long to Short: How Interest Rates Shape Life Insurance Markets. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.04925

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

The time interpretation of expected utility theory

Economic models often maximise expectation values of wealth or utility. In non-ergodic settings, these can differ from time-averages, so that maximising expected outcomes need not maximise – and can systematically reduce – long-run wealth or utility. Ergodicity economics highlights this problem and models individual agents as maximising wealth in the long run, known as growth optimality. Two instances where expected utility maximisation maps to growth optimality are known: linear utility does this for additive wealth dynamics; and logarithmic utility for multiplicative wealth dynamics. Here we show that the mapping holds more generally when the utility function coincides with the ergodicity transformation in the growth optimal model. This mapping offers a theoretical basis for choosing utility functions and suggests the testable hypothesis that wealth dynamics are predictive of risk preferences.

econ.GN↗
arXiv2026

Monetary Regimes and Trade before the Classical Gold Standard: Evidence from the Latin Monetary Union

This paper reexamines the trade effects of the Latin Monetary Union (LMU), a 19th century agreement to standardize gold and silver coinage among several European countries. The LMU provides a useful setting for studying whether monetary arrangements fostered trade before the classical gold standard, when gold, silver, bimetallic, and paper regimes coexisted. Because some countries already shared other monetary standards, treating all non-member pairs as a single control group mixes pairs with and without alternative forms of monetary coordination. I classify pairs by standard and estimate the LMU effect relative to pairs without a common standard, bringing the comparison closer to those used in the literature on the gold standard and contemporary currency unions. The results suggest that the LMU increased trade between its members by approximately 30\% during its early years, when bimetallism was still credible. These effects subsequently faded, converging to zero by the end of the 1870s. More broadly, these findings also highlight the importance of accounting for the existing monetary regimes when estimating the trade effects of other international policies.

econ.GN↗
arXiv2026

Access to Live AI Advice and Behavior Under Risk: An Incentivized Experiment

Generative AI has become an everyday advisor, and the systems people consult are live and interactive, not pre-scripted. We ask whether access to such a system changes behavior under risk. In an incentivized experiment (N = 158), participants made lottery choices with an optional decision aid presented as a conventional pre-written tool, a live one-shot AI, or a live interactive AI they could query, with information format held equivalent across conditions. Risk preferences are elicited via DOSE. We find no evidence that access to a live AI advisor changes risk aversion.

econ.GN↗