The 2008 financial crisis brought a focus on the potential for a large insurance firm to contribute to systemic risk. Among the concerns raised was that a negative shock to insurers could lead to a fire sale of corporate bonds, a market where insurers are among the largest participants. This manuscript discusses the existing evidence on life insurance firms and systemic risk, with a focus on the investment-grade corporate bond market. We provide some tentative evidence that life insurers tend to absorb liquidity risk by purchasing bonds when the bonds are less liquid than average. However, we do not find evidence that insurers increased bond purchases specifically during the financial crisis, leaving open the question of whether insurers would play a stabilizing role in a future crisis.

中文翻译：

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人寿保险业与系统性风险：债券市场的视角

2008年的金融危机使人们更加关注大型保险公司对系统性风险作出贡献的潜力。引起关注的问题之一是，对保险公司的负面冲击可能导致公司债券大卖，在这个市场中，保险公司是最大的参与者之一。该手稿讨论了有关人寿保险公司和系统性风险的现有证据，重点是投资级公司债券市场。我们提供了一些初步的证据，即当债券的流动性低于平均水平时，人寿保险公司倾向于通过购买债券来吸收流动性风险。但是，我们找不到证据表明保险公司特别是在金融危机期间增加了债券购买量，这使保险公司在未来的危机中是否会发挥稳定作用的问题悬而未决。