Improving the Equity-Efficiency Trade-Off: Mandatory Savings Accounts for Social Insurance

In the modern welfare state a substantial part of an individual's tax bill is transferred back to the same individual taxpayer in the form of social transfers. This provides a rationale for financing part of social insurance through mandatory savings accounts. We analyze the behavioral and welfare effects of compulsory savings accounts in an intertemporal model with uncertainty, involuntary unemployment, endogenous retirement decisions, credit constraints, and heterogeneous agents. We show that the introduction of (early) retirement and unemployment accounts generates a Pareto improvement by enabling the government to provide lifetime income insurance and liquidity insurance in a more efficient manner.     

Pure Versus Mutual Health Insurance: Evidence From Swedish Historical Data

Using data from voluntary Swedish health insurance societies 1902‐1910, this article analyzes the coexistence of pure and mutual insurance societies where pure societies are characterized by charging ex ante premiums only while mutuals in addition charge ex post assessments. On average, mutual insurance societies are found to be larger and to offer greater insurance coverage per member. Pure insurance societies have, on average, higher insurance coverage per day, greater mean levels of moral hazard controls, a higher mean number of policy categories, and greater longevity.     

Premium setting and bank behavior in a voluntary deposit insurance scheme

This study analyzes the effect of premium rates on banks’ incentives to join a deposit insurance scheme and their incentives to invest in risky projects under a voluntary deposit insurance scheme. We find that in order to maximize social welfare, the insurance agency must either set the premium rate to be low so as to attract all banks to join the insurance scheme, or not to have the deposit insurance at all. However, the low premium rate in the voluntary scheme does not balance the budget of the deposit insurance. We also show that in the compulsory deposit insurance scheme, however, it is possible to impose an optimal premium rate that can balance the insurance agency’s budget and achieve the highest social welfare. The results also present the dominance of the compulsory scheme over the voluntary scheme in terms of maximizing social welfare and balancing the budget.

美国失业保险税对我国的启示

美国的失业保险是联邦和州政府的合作项目,它通过失业保险税来融资。其失业保险税立法及执行保障层次高,税制设计科学合理。建议我国在借鉴美国失业保险税制的基础上,尽快颁布《社会保险法》,建立中央和地方两种失业保险税,在具体规定上给予地方一定的自主权,采用失业保险税率的经验评估方法,以进一步改革和完善我国的失业保险缴贲制度。     

State Dependent Unemployment Benefits

Optimal design of unemployment insurance is considered in a search setting where the state of nature (business cycle) affects the unemployment risk and thus the return to search. The incentive effects or distortions of individual job search arising due to the unemployment insurance scheme are crucial for optimal policies, so is the scope for risk diversification that depends critically on whether the balanced budget requirement applies to each state of nature or across states of nature. In the former case a basic budget effect tends to cause optimal benefits to be procyclical. If risk diversification across states of nature is possible, the fact that incentives are more distorted in good than bad states of nature tends to make both benefits and contribution rates countercyclical. It is shown that countercyclical benefits exacerbate employment fluctuations but increase average employment by aligning benefits more with states of nature where the incentive costs are small.     

Saving and Portfolio Allocation Before and After Job Loss

We investigate the development of household labor income, financial wealth, and asset holdings over a 9‐year period around job loss, using unique administrative panel data from Norway. Consistent with predictions from theory, the data show additional saving and a shift toward safer assets in the years leading up to unemployment, and depletion of savings after job loss. In the years after job loss, the households' after‐tax labor income is reduced by about USD 12,500. Over the same time period, households deplete USD 3,000 of their financial assets, of which one third is accumulated prior to the job loss. This suggests that at least some households can foresee and prepare for the upcoming unemployment, which indicates that private savings can, to some extent, serve as a substitute for publicly provided unemployment insurance.     

The mortality among industrial insured lives in Norway 1931–1940

Abstract

Industrial insurance was introduced in Norway in 1903 by The Norwegian Life Insurance Company FRAM which was alone in this branch of life insurance activity until 1918, when The Life Insurance Company Norske Folk adopted industrial insurance also. Later on other companies too have started industrial insurance, but Fram is still by far the largest industrial insurance company in Norway, and to-day works with industrial insurance with weekly, monthly and daily premiums (calendarpremium).     

Public Versus Private Insurance with Dual Theory: A Political Economy Argument

This paper analyzes the political support for public insurance in the presence of a private insurance alternative. The public insurance is compulsory and offers a uniform insurance policy. The private insurance is voluntary and can offer different insurance policies. Adopting Yaari's [Econometrica, 55, 95–115, 1987] dual theory to expected utility (i.e., risk aversion without diminishing marginal utility of income), we show that adverse selection on the private insurance market may lead a majority of individuals to prefer public insurance over private insurance, even if the median risk is below the average risk (so that the median actually subsidizes high-risk individuals). We also show that risk aversion makes public insurance more attractive and that the dual theory is less favourable to a mixed insurance system than the expected utility framework. Lastly, we demonstrate how the use of genetic tests may threaten the political viability of public insurance.     

Marktversagen auf dem geförderten Pflegezusatzversicherungsmarkt?

This study analyzes the supply side of the private German long term care insurance market. It compares loads and comprehensiveness of subsidized and unsubsidized insurance policies for three age groups. The results show that subsidized insurance policies are less comprehensive than unsubsidized insurance policies. In addition the premiums of subsidized policies are marked up substantially above expected benefits compared to unsubsidized policies. All in all these results indicate market failure due to adverse selection within the subsidized private long term care insurance market. Furthermore, the results show that due to unisex pricing, private long term care policies are in general more attractive to women than to men. As this is not reflected in demand, other factors than supply side failure seem to contribute to an overall low demand for private long term care insurance policies.     

Unemployment insurance and incentives

In this paper we present a partial economic equilibrium model of the labor market in which we maximize the workers' expected discounted utility level, while implying a zero expected profit for the firms. The model we use for the labor market takes into consideration transitions between the various states of employment and the time periods spent in each state. The probability distribution of these time periods may be arbitrary, not restricted to being exponential, as is the case for ordinary time-continuous Markov processes. The basic principles and difficulties arising from monitoring problems and moral hazard are discussed. In order to analyze unemployment insurance schemes that include incentives for workers to avoid unemployment, we depart from the simplest form of the principle of equivalence in insurance. Several different alternatives are discussed, all giving rise to partial insurance and thus incentives. We also analyze the effects that early retirement have on unemployment. Here, we include social security benefits in the economic model. Finally, we show that the optimal solutions entail quantity rationing.     

Banks,bankruptcy, and public regulation

In a simple state-preference model with a complete capital market, some surprising implications of equilibrium in the banking industry are derived. For example, to limit a bank's probability of bankruptcy, it is sufficient for public regulators to control the composition and relative size of its portfolio or marketable securities. Generally, its loans need not be restricted. Also, under most publicly subsidized deposit insurance, bankers select very risky portfolios of bonds and loans with or without any risk adjustment in the insurance premium. In fact, with many types of subsidized insurance, public monitoring of bank loans is essential.     

Unemployment insurance in a three-state model of the labor market

The paper extends the model of Krusell et al. (2010) to study the welfare effects of unemployment insurance. The model unemployment insurance program includes four realistic features: 1) a 50% replacement rate up to a benefit cap; 2) finite duration of eligibility during a jobless spell; 3) limited eligibility; and 4) and an imperfectly monitored job search requirement. The model is parameterized to fit the size of scope of unemployment insurance in the United States. Removing unemployment insurance from the model leads to only a 0.1% consumption equivalent increase in average welfare. Simplifying assumptions about the structure of unemployment insurance, such as allowing all job losers to receive benefits, lead to much larger welfare effects similar to the effects found in the past literature. Understanding the welfare effects of unemployment insurance requires careful modeling of the structure of the program.     

On the mortality in Danish burial societies

Abstract

In Denmark existed in the years 1900—1940 a union of Burial Societies named »Genforsikringen af Begravelseskasser i Danmark» (the Reinsurance of B. S.'s in Denmark), including in 1940 about 1225 societies with 1)40,000 members. In the following pages we shall, for abbreviation, call it The Reinsurance. This union comprised, according to its byelaws, only B. S.'s connected with sickness societies belonging to the unions for such societies existing in the different parts of the kingdom and almost all receiving grants from the State. As such sickness societies are only intended for the less well-off part of the population, of which the majority are workers, we get rather good information on the mortality in this part of the people by researches on the mortality in the membership of the aforesaid burial societies.     

中国失业保险支出水平的测度模型与实证分析

中国失业保险制度应该保持合理的支出水平，衡量标准主要看其是否为失业者提供了适度的收入保障以及是否对就业起到积极的促进作用。本文建立了测量失业保险支出水平的数理模型，根据国外典型国家的经验数据大体确定了失业保险支出水平的适度界限，并对中国现实的失业保险支出水平及其影响因素进行了分析，最后提出了完善失业保险制度以及合理提高失业保险支出水平的政策建议。     

Beitragssatzwirkungen der Einbeziehung von Beamten in die GKV

It is often expected that the inclusion of the civil servants in the statutory health insurance (SHI) would lead to a decrease of the health insurance contribution. Former studies that tried to analyse the effect, often needed to be calculated under certain assumptions due to missing data. For the current analysis, detailed statistics about the civil servants could be processed for the first time. There are three static models and one comparative-static model computed. The first static model simulates the risk effect (civil servants as a good or a bad risk), the second one analyses the effect of a compulsory insurance. The third model considers the gradual abolition of the health allowance system. The comparative-static model evaluates the expenses for civil servant pensioners for the year 2012 under the assumptions of the second static model.     

Employment and Welfare Effects of a Two-Tier Unemployment Compensation System

In Germany, as in many OECD countries, such as the United Kingdom, unemployment compensation consists of unemployment insurance and unemployment assistance. Unemployment assistance is provided subsequent to the expiration of entitlement to unemployment insurance and is lower. The effects of this two-tier unemployment compensation system are studied in a general equilibrium job search model with endogenous distributions of income, wealth, and employment which is calibrated with regard to the characteristics of the German economy. Our results are as follows: (i) employment is a decreasing function of both unemployment insurance and unemployment assistance. (ii) Aggregate savings are (not) a monotone decreasing function of unemployment assistance (unemployment insurance) payments. (iii) Optimal unemployment compensation payments are found to be a decreasing function over time.     

强制责任保险与无过失保险可否兼容?——台湾的经验与大陆的教训

强制责任保险与无过失保险是机动车强制保险的两种模式,二者在保险原理、保障范围及运作机制等方面都有较大不同。与大多数强制责任保险立法不同,我国台湾地区《强制汽车责任保险法》在强制责任保险的框架内吸收了无过失保险的经验,规定了保险公司的无过失赔偿责任,并已被实践证明运行良好。然而,《道路交通安全法》第76条强制责任保险与无过失保险结合的规定却遭到了质疑。因此,有必要探讨强制责任保险与无过失保险的兼容性问题。     

论机动车第三者责任保险中“第三者”的界定

先根据合同相对性原理对机动车第三者责任保险中的“第三者”作出一般性解释,然后介绍我国机动车第三者责任保险对“第三者”外延的界定,再对相关界定作进一步的分析和评价,认为根据我国当前的相关立法环境可以将机动车第三者责任保险的被保险人调整为车辆实际使用人;被保险人不应该是机动车第三者责任保险中的“第三者”;从事驾驶工作的雇用...     

Massachusetts Health Care Reform: The View From One Year Out

One of the most important developments in health policy in recent years was the health reform plan enacted by Massachusetts in April 2006. This sweeping bill reformed insurance markets, subsidized insurance coverage for a large swath of the population, introduced a new purchasing mechanism (the "Connector"), and mandated insurance coverage for almost all citizens. In this article, I review the history of health reform in Massachusetts, highlighting the unique features that came together to make reform a reality in this state. I then turn to a discussion of the major issues that have been faced in the first year of implementing this reform and the compromises made to maintain a broad consensus of support in the state. I also discuss the lessons learned and contrast the Massachusetts approach with alternatives, most notably plans that rely more strongly on the employer-based insurance system to expand insurance coverage in the United States.     

The Trade-Off between Insurance and Incentives in Differentiated Unemployment Policies

In this paper, I revisit the central trade-off between insurance and incentives in the design of unemployment insurance policies. The generosity of unemployment insurance benefits differs not only across countries, but also across workers within countries. After illustrating some important dimensions of heterogeneity in a cross-country analysis, I extend the standard Baily–Chetty formula to identify the key empirical moments and elasticities required to evaluate the differentiated unemployment policy within a country. I also review some prior work and aim to provide guidance for future work trying to inform the design of unemployment policies.