Insurance Services: Measuring Utility and Added Value Creation

Even though insurance is of primordial importance in domestic economies and internationally and its role in the development process is at the agenda of international organizations such as UNCTAD, the World Bank and the IMF, its relative importance and its value-added remain difficult to assess. Like other financial services, insurance has grown in quantitative importance as part of the general economic development and it also has become qualitatively more important due to the increase of risks and uncertainties in most societies. This paper presents the traditional approaches to the economic measurement of insurance and discusses the possible measures of its value-added in the economy.