Insuring modern society: A historical-comparative sociology of private insurance, its evolution, origins and consequences

为现代社会提供保险：私人保险的历史比较社会学、其演变、起源和后果

• 批准号: 521230583
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Sebastian Kohl
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Abteilung Soziologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/521230583?language=en
• 关键词: Insuring; modern; society; historical; comparative

This project proposes a historical-comparative sociology of the private insurance sector in its life and non-life branches (property, transport, etc.) in 20 old OECD countries starting in the late 19th century and 15 emerging economies with shorter coverage (Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe). The insurance sector annually collects about 7% of world GDP as premium income, holds about half of total banking assets and becomes increasingly important in times of rising climate and catastrophe risks. This has strangely been neglected by both historians and economists of finance, with their focus on banks and capital markets, as well as by political scientists, with their strong focus on public insurances within the welfare states. Sociologists themselves have covered many facets of modern risk societies very well, but largely ignored the insurance sector therein. This project aims at filling this gap by building a cross-country historical database of the main stock and flow variables of modern premium-based insurances in order to study their evolution across time and countries, to explain their growth and to investigate selected consequences in three working packages. The first working package will build the insurance database and describe the about 200 years of modern insurance development and will compare its growth trends with those of other financial institutions and the public welfare state. It will also uncover countries’ different insurance growth trajectories. The second working package addresses the question of different growth determinants by mainly looking at often discussed economic and cultural factors, i.e. the relationship between economic development and insurance growth and the potentially Weberian relationship between Protestantism and different denominations and insurance development. A final working package focuses on selected consequences of insurances: does the sector macroeconomically insure against financial and other crises by allowing for quicker economic recoveries? Is there a trade-off between private insurers and public insurance domains, particularly in the pension and accident domain? Overall, the project connects to some questions studied across different disciplines for very short time spans, but plays out its huge data advantage of covering many countries in the long-run. Beyond building a future database for practical use in welfare, finance and securities studies, the project contributes to a potential sociology insurance that connects to Weberian themes of rationalization, to the different worlds of public welfare and the varieties of capitalism.

本项目对20个19世纪末开始的经合组织成员国和15个覆盖面较短的新兴经济体（拉丁美洲、亚洲、东欧）私营保险部门的寿险和非寿险部门（财产、运输等）进行历史-比较社会学研究。保险业每年的保费收入约占全球GDP的7%，约占银行总资产的一半，在气候和巨灾风险不断上升的时期，保险业变得越来越重要。奇怪的是，这一点被关注银行和资本市场的金融历史学家和经济学家，以及非常关注福利国家内部公共保险的政治学家所忽视。社会学家自己已经很好地涵盖了现代风险社会的许多方面，但在很大程度上忽略了其中的保险业。本项目旨在填补这一空白，建立一个现代保费保险的主要存量和流量变量的跨国历史数据库，以便研究它们在不同时间和国家的演变，解释它们的增长，并在三个工作包中调查选定的后果。第一个工作包将建立保险数据库，描述现代保险大约200年的发展，并将其与其他金融机构和公共福利国家的增长趋势进行比较。它还将揭示各国不同的保险增长轨迹。第二个工作包通过主要关注经常讨论的经济和文化因素来解决不同增长决定因素的问题，即经济发展与保险增长之间的关系以及新教与不同教派和保险发展之间潜在的韦伯式关系。最后的工作方案侧重于保险的选定后果：该部门是否通过允许更快的经济复苏，在宏观上防范金融和其他危机？私人保险公司和公共保险公司之间是否存在取舍，特别是在养老金和意外事故领域？总体而言，该项目在很短的时间跨度内连接了不同学科研究的一些问题，但从长远来看，它发挥了覆盖许多国家的巨大数据优势。除了为福利、金融和证券研究建立一个实际应用的未来数据库之外，该项目还有助于建立一个潜在的社会学保险，将韦伯的合理化主题、公共福利的不同世界和资本主义的多样性联系起来。