hard market

Noun

hard market (plural hard markets)

1. An economic environment in which insurers raise their prices.
   • Property-liability insurance markets have been characterized historically by “soft” markets, in which prices are stable or falling and coverage is readily available, followed by “hard” markets, in which prices rise rapidly and availability declines.2000, Scott Harrington, Patricia Danzon, “The Economics of Liability Insurance”, in Georges Dionne, editor, Handbook of Insurance, Springer Science+Business Media, →DOI, →ISBN, page 296
   • A possible explanation for this difference is that under the variations-from-bureau rates-without-prior-approval regime, the regulatory agency continues to hold rates down during a hard market but allows the insurer to increase rates relative to pure administered pricing during the soft phase of...2001, Terry Thomason; Timothy P. Schmidle; John F. Burton, Jr., chapter 7, in Workers’ Compensation: Benefits, Costs, and Safety under Alternative Insurance Arrangements, W.E. Upjohn Institute for...