EH.N: CfP: APEBH 2008, Asia-Pacific Economic and Business History Conference

[Robin Pearson]

APEBH 2008, Asia-Pacific Economic and Business History Conference, 
Melbourne 13-15 Feb. 2008

We invite proposals for papers or expressions of interest in the 
following two interconnected sessions at the forthcoming APEBH 2008.

Insurance, Economy and Environment in the Asia-Pacific World

1. Environmental change, natural hazard, and the role of insurance

Environmental hazards, their economic impact and the redistribution 
of resources required to cope with them, are rapidly rising to the 
top of economic as well as political agendas. They are also 
attracting increasing interest among economic and business historians 
specifically, and, more generally, among historians interested in 
issues relating to perceptions and reactions to risk. Insurance, the 
classic risk business, is often affected earlier by environmental 
hazards than other industries and forced to adapt business strategies 
and underwriting policies. This session invites historians to explore 
the exposure and reaction patterns of the insurance industry to 
hazards associated with environmental change. Possible topics might 
include:

- Asia-Pacific specific disasters: typhoon, earthquake, tsunamis, and floods

- The limits of insurance: 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and tsunami

- The role of micro insurance in environmentally challenged regions

- The "educational or regulatory" role of the reinsurance industry / 
reinsurance as an early warning system

- The relationship between state relief programmes and the cost and 
supply of private insurance capacity


2. Foreign insurers in a new environment

To a large extent insurance and reinsurance concepts were exported to 
Asia, predominantly from the UK, France, Germany, and, through 
reinsurance, also Switzerland and Germany. The vehicles for such 
exports were the world's leading multinational insurance companies. 
These faced many of the informational and monitoring problems typical 
of western multinationals crossing cultural as well as political 
borders. This session invites historians to explore how the insurance 
industry adapted, or failed to adapt, when they moved to new markets 
in the East.  Possible papers might include:

- Early UK insurance companies in Australia

- Shanghai insurers in the 1940s, doing Western business with Western 
clients in an Eastern environment

- Hong Kong insurance after the 1997 handover

- The rise of an insurance market in the PRC

- Takaful insurance in Indonesia and Malaysia

- The relationship of western insurers with the state in closely 
regulated markets (Japan, China) or with state monopolies (India)

Anyone interested in these sessions is very welcome to contact either 
Robin Pearson or NielsViggo Haueter, as below:

Professor Robin Pearson
Professor of Economic History
Department of History
University of Hull
Cottingham Road
HULL HU6 7RX
UK
Tel. (0) 1482 466301
Fax. (0) 1482 466126
email. R.Pearson at hull.ac.uk
www.corporategovernancehistory.org.uk

NielsViggo Haueter
Corporate History
Swiss Reinsurance Company
Mythenquai 50/60
CH-8022 Zurich
Switzerland
Tel. 0041 43 285 8813
Fax. 0041 43 282 8813
email: NielsViggo_Haueter at swissre.com