What Private Equity Does Differently: Evidence from Life Insurance
研究私募股权如何通过监管和税收套利在人寿保险业创造价值，短期让消费者受益于更优惠定价，但长期因风险增加可能导致消费者受损。
Abstract This paper studies how private equity creates value and its consequences for consumer welfare in the insurance industry, where PE investments grew tenfold following the financial crisis. PE firms add value through regulatory and tax arbitrage that increases profits relative to their non-PE counterparts. Crucially, the impact on consumer welfare is nuanced: in the short run, consumers benefit from more favorably priced products. But the arbitrage strategy also exposes them to more risk, as annual expected losses scaled by capital buffers rise by 50 percentage points. This creates the possibility of consumer harm in the event of a downturn. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.