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Abstract After 2007,due to the impact of the financial crisis,the competition tension of China's insurance market has aggravated remarkably.In order to obtain advantages in the future competition,insurance companies gradually pay more attention to the scale efficiency and technological progress.The phenomenon also attracts relevant scholars' interest.However,the mainstream of China's academia does not support insurance companies to carry out expansionary operation patterns in an active way because it is believed that the scale efficiency will be reduced in the course of business development and technological innovation of insurance companies,which is considered as an inefficient operation behavior by scholars.In this paper,as it is considered that the behavior of business development and technological innovation has a long-term effect on insurance companies,we observe the relationship between scale efficiency and technological progress of insurance companies and try to find out the positive factors behind the scale inefficiency.We measure the insurance management data from 2007 to 2013 by using the DEA method and compute insurance companies' scale efficiency and technological progress rate which also is named the Malmquist index.According to the analysis results,we analyze the insurance companies by a panel data regression model along with five aspects which are company property,profitability,earnings growth,risk control and business scale.This research method is more comprehensive,perspicuous and coherent than the existing literatures and this paper's pointcut which is the relationship between scale efficiency and technological progress rate of insurance companies has not yet been mentioned in present literatures.According to the results of empirical researches,we make the following conclusions:(1) The scale efficiency of insurance companies has a negative effect on the technological progress rate.The reduction of scale efficiency caused by insurance companies' behavior of business development and technological innovation will promote the technological progress effectively.In the long run,lessening the current scale efficiency to improve the future technological progress rate can be beneficial to insurance companies.(2) In the point of view of technological progress,a subsidiary of a foreign insurance company is significantly better than a China's insurance company,which is due to its management experience and technology acquisition.In order to shorten the technological gap between each other,China's insurance companies should purposefully learn from the experience and technology of foreign insurance companies.(3) The enhancement of profit growth efficiency and the decrease of loss ratio will improve the technological progress rate of insurance companies.It needs lots of labor and material sources for insurance companies to increase the technological progress rate.The profit growth efficiency reflects the growth of insurance companies' resources while the loss ration displays the capability of risk control when it comes to potential property loss.Therefore,to increase profit growth efficiency and to decrease loss ratio will make insurance companies have more resources to inject into technological innovation so as to improve technological progress rate.(4) The ratio of owner's equity,which is the value of owner's equity divided by total assets,and ROE have a negative relationship with the technological progress rate.The ratio of owner's equity shows the degree of company controlling by the owners.Based on the features of the owners who pursue profit,an insurance company with a high ratio of owner's equity is difficult to implement a relatively risky innovation behavior.And a company with higher ROE also means that there is less resources in the inefficient technological innovation department.Thus,if an insurance company has a higher ratio of owner's equity and ROE,its technological progress rate will be lower.(5) Group insurance companies occupying more market share can evidently increase the technological progress rate.Group insurance companies realize that the strategy of pluralistic management and a higher market share can provide a more favorable competition environment for group insurance companies,which can reduce the risk of technological innovation and improve the technological progress rate.
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