The question of whether an automobile accident victim should be allowed to bring a claim for punitive damages for unfair settlement practices against another person's liability insurer Ü a so-called third-party, bad faith suit Ü has become an important policy concern. This book examines the compensation that automobile insurers paid to accident victims in California during a period, 1979 to 1988, when such punitive damages claims were permitted. This book looks at the effects of the adoption and subsequent rejection of the Royal Globe doctrine, which allowed third-party bad-faith suits, on compensation and costs of bodily injury claims. The authors find that the adoption of Royal Globe triggered sharp increases in both the average bodily compensation payment and the relative frequency of bodily injury claims in California relative to the other tort states. In contrast, the elimination of Royal Globe dramatically reversed these trends.

The fields of insurance law and insurance economics have long and distinguished scholarly histories, but participants in the two disciplines have not always communicated well across academic silos. This Handbook encourages more policy-relevant insurance e

Focusing on issues of vital importance to those seeking to understand and reform the tort system, this volume takes a multi-disciplinary approach, including theoretical economic analysis, empirical analysis, socio-economic analysis, and behavioral anal

"No-fault automobile-insurance regimes were the culmination of decades of dissatisfaction with the use of the traditional tort system for compensating victims of automobile accidents. They promised quicker, fairer, less-contentious, and, it was hoped, less-expensive resolution of automobile-accident injuries. This monograph considers how these plans have fared. After reviewing the intellectual and political history of no-fault auto insurance, the monograph concludes that no-fault lost political popularity because of the perception that it did not deliver the promised consumer premium cost reductions. Analysis of data from a variety of sources confirms this view, demonstrating that premiums and claim costs have become substantially larger in no-fault states than in other states over time. These cost increases can be traced to a variety of factors, including growth in excess claiming in no-fault states and convergence between no-fault and tort states in litigation patterns and noneconomic-damage payments. However, the primary driver of no-fault's cost growth has been high medical costs. The extent to which these additional costs represent augmented utilization of medical services rather than cost shifting from the medical insurance system to the automobile insurance system remains unclear." --Back cover.

Includes Reports (R-series), Rand Memorandums (RM-series), papers (P-series), and Books.