Uncertainty of Governmental Relief and the Crowding out of Flood Insurance

This paper discusses the problem of crowding out of insurance by co-existing governmental relief programs—the so-called ‘charity hazard’—in the context of different institutional schemes of governmental disaster relief in Austria and Germany. We test empirically whether an assured partial relief scheme (as in Austria) drives a stronger crowding out of private insurance than a scheme promising full relief which is subject to ad-hoc political decision making (as in Germany). Our general finding is that the institutional design of governmental relief programs significantly affects the demand for private natural hazard insurance.     

A general formula for the optimal level of social insurance

In an influential paper, Baily (1978) showed that the optimal level of unemployment insurance (UI) in a stylized static model depends on only three parameters: risk aversion, the consumption-smoothing benefit of UI, and the elasticity of unemployment durations with respect to the benefit rate. This paper examines the key economic assumptions under which these parameters determine the optimal level of social insurance. I show that a Baily-type expression, with an adjustment for precautionary saving motives, holds in a general class of dynamic models subject to weak regularity conditions. For example, the simple reduced-form formula derived here applies with arbitrary borrowing constraints, durable consumption goods, private insurance arrangements, and search and leisure benefits of unemployment.     

The political sustainability of a basic income scheme and social health insurance

This paper studies within a two‐stage framework the political economy of a basic income (BI) and social health insurance (SHI) scheme. At the constitutional stage, individuals decide whether these schemes are implemented behind a veil of ignorance about their future income and risk type. This decision is made in anticipation of the outcome at the second stage in which individuals vote on the payroll tax to finance a BI and the contribution rate of a SHI scheme provided these schemes have been implemented. Depending on the amount of healthcare expenditure and the inequalities in income and risk, only a social health insurance scheme is implemented at the constitutional stage.     

Commons as insurance and the welfare impact of privatization

It is shown here that, despite the efficiency gains from privatization, when markets are incomplete, all individuals may be made worse off by privatization, even when the resource is equitably privatized. Such market incompleteness is common in the developing world and can explain the often encountered resistance to efficiency enhancing privatizing reforms, especially in the case of village level landholdings and forests. The advantage of common held property arises because of its superior insurance properties (which tend to provide income maintenance in low states). Sufficient conditions are established under which any feasible insurance scheme under private property cannot ex ante Pareto dominate allocations under the commons.     

Pricing urban congestion: A structural random utility model with traffic anticipation

We design and estimate a game theoretic congestion pricing mechanism in which the regulator aims at reducing urban traffic congestion by price discriminating travelers according to their value of time (VOT). Travelers' preferences depend on their observable characteristics, on the endogenous amount of congestion anticipated, on their marginal utility (MU) of income and on some unobserved factors. Using a French household survey, we estimate the demand models to simulate different pricing mechanisms. We find that unobserved determinants of transportation demand are significant and are used to measure the anticipated time spent in traffic and the comfort of traveling: diverging from these expectations is felt as more discomfort than if no expectations were formed a priori. However, some of this discomfort is derived from travelers' marginal utility of income: the lost time in traffic is clearly “unpleasant” because of its opportunity cost. When the regulator and the transportation provider share common objectives, we show that a great welfare improvement can be achieved when implementing a homogenous pricing that accurately accounts for travelers VOT.     

MUTUAL HEALTH ORGANIZATIONS AS FACILITATORS AND/OR BARRIERS TOWARDS THE SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF NHIS IN GHANA

There are many constraints to implementing comprehensive health insurance in the context of Sub‐Saharan Africa. Mutual health organizations are under pressure to resolve the inadequacies, accordingly. The objective of this study is to explore the extent to which the mutual health organizations constitute facilitators and/or barriers to the successful implementation of the health insurance scheme nationwide. Data were gathered through interviews and review of literature. The findings of the empirical data were analyzed using theories of health seeking behaviour and reflexive communities. The findings of the paper suggest that the mutual health organizations are beneficial to their communities as they have broadened the understanding of the community members, regarding what the concept of health insurance was in Ghana, a country where it was a relatively new concept in public health financing and delivery. However, the paper also observes that the mutual health organizations are facing problems that are likely to affect sustainability overtime under a national health insurance scheme. Therefore, the need for continuous public education to sustain the enthusiasm among community members is recommended.     

Alternative Schemes for Distributing Transfers to Natural Disaster Victims: Analysis and Implementation*

This paper outlines a scheme for distributing natural disaster relief to individuals derived from the principles of equity in taxation. This scheme is then given a specific algebraic formulation which, given a constraint on the total value of grants to be distributed, can be solved subject to grant-making bodies determining one of two policy parameters, viz, a subsistence income level below which disaster victims would bear no damage themselves, or the rate at which grants are reduced as peoples' incomes increase. The scheme as outlined can be adapted to policy makers' different specifications of one of these two parameters. Empirical implementation of the scheme is illustrated.     

Endogenous Categorization in Insurance

This paper analyzes the welfare properties of equilibrium when insurers use observable actions to classify consumers into different risk categories, and consumers' choice is influenced by the insurance market consequences of their actions. Specifically, we analyze this problem at the example of a car insurance market, in which individual preferences over car types are correlated with risk type and used by insurance firms for ratemaking. Equilibrium premiums for each car are determined by the losses that it generates. Consumers take insurance premiums into account when deciding which car to buy. This creates an incentive to buy the car that is preferred by more low risk individuals. From a utilitarian point of view, this incentive is excessive. Depending on parameters, it may even be possible to construct a tax‐subsidy scheme with balanced budget that Pareto improves on the market equilibrium.     

基于Merton模型的存款保险定价研究

存款保险制度的核心是存款保险费率的厘定。本文以Merton存款保险定价的看跌期权模型为基础,引入监管宽容和未保险存款的利率两个参数,给出了商业银行存款保险定价公式。选择不同的银行对其保险费率进行估算,所得的保险费率之间有一定的差距,表明不同银行的存款保险费率是不同的,中国不适合单一费率,而适合风险费率。本文对我国正在酝酿出台的存款保险制度具有一定的指导意义。     

Incentives and efficiency in the kosygin reforms

Some of the efficiency implications of an incentive scheme for enterprises under which bonuses depend on sales and the rate of profit (one of the major schemes introduced by the 1965 Kosygin industrial reforms in the USSR) are explored. Various efficiency problems are identified, and the use of the scheme to induce effort and raise productivity is analyzed.     

Public versus private risk sharing

Can public income insurance through progressive income taxation improve the allocation of risk in an economy where private risk sharing is incomplete? The answer depends crucially on the fundamental friction that limits private risk sharing in the first place. If risk sharing is limited because insurance markets are missing for model-exogenous reasons (as in Bewley (1986) [8]) publicly provided risk sharing improves on the allocation of risk. If instead private insurance markets exist but their use is limited by limited enforcement (as in Kehoe and Levine (1993) [23]) then the provision of public insurance interacts with equilibrium private insurance, as, by providing risk sharing, the government affects the value of exclusion from private insurance markets and thus the enforcement mechanism of these contracts. We characterize consumption allocations in an economy with limited enforcement and a continuum of agents facing plausible income risk and tax systems with various degrees of progressivity (public risk sharing). We provide conditions under which more publicly provided insurance actually reduces total insurance for agents (excess crowding-out), or under which more public insurance increases total insurance (partial crowding-out).     

Unemployment Insurance under Moral Hazard and Limited Commitment: Public versus Private Provision

This paper analyzes a model of private unemployment insurance under limited commitment and a model of public unemployment insurance subject to moral hazard in an economy with a continuum of agents and an infinite time horizon. The dynamic and steady‐state properties of the optimum private unemployment insurance scheme are established. The interaction between public and private unemployment insurance schemes is examined. Examples are constructed to show that for some parameter values increased public insurance can reduce welfare by crowding out private insurance more than one‐to‐one and that for other parameter values a mix of both public and private insurance can be welfare maximizing.     

The Economic Impact of the Proposed National Superannuation Scheme for Australia*

Employing a framework commonly used in the analysis of Government tax-transfer programmes, an attempt is made to assess the proposed National Superannuation Scheme for Australia. It is argued that the scheme would almost totally relieve poverty amongst pensioners, as well as being likely to reduce income inequality in a more general sense and compensate for fundamental failures in the capital market. However, the scheme does not compensate for a major failure in the insurance market which, if it did, would provide a justification for one important aspect of the scheme, namely earnings related benefits.     

巨灾风险下的投保行为 ——基于实验理论的研究

中国尚无巨灾保险市场,研究人们在巨灾风险下的投保行为对巨灾保险市场的建立与发展都具有重要的意义。本文以地震风险为例,运用实验经济学的方法,探讨了个体面对巨灾风险时的投保行为与相关理论问题。研究结果表明,人们的投保决策受其对风险概率认知的影响较小,知道清晰的风险概率甚至会降低投保率;在实验中引入仿真信息,将诱导被试投保;而过往受灾经历影响较大,且这种影响并不一定需要亲身经历才能形成,知晓他人遭受灾难也能唤起人们的投保意识。通过扩展传统的实验理论,实验室实验被应用到了这种因难以控制变量而研究较少的领域,并发现了投保行为的某些特征。     

Social insurance and social justice—Another look at the antipoverty effects of social insurance programs

This paper analyzes social insurance programs in the United States to determine if they support the principles of social justice, with special emphasis on the principle of preferential treatment of the poor. The paper also examines the antipoverty effects of social insurance programs. The major conclusions are the following: (1) social insurance programs generally are consistent with the principles of social justice, but parts of certain programs clearly violate the norms of social justice; (2) social insurance programs are especially powerful in reducing the poverty rate and poverty gap for the elderly, but are generally ineffective in reducing the poverty rate for single-parent families with related children under age 18; (3) social insurance programs have only a minor impact in reducing the poverty rate among married-couple families with related children under age 18; and (4) although the Social Security payroll results in a small increase in the poverty rate, social insurance programs are especially effective in reducing income inequality.     

A social economist’s search for justice: Comment

This paper analyzes social insurance programs in the United States to determine if they support the principles of social justice, with special emphasis on the principle of preferential treatment of the poor. The paper also examines the antipoverty effects of social insurance programs. The major conclusions are the following: (1) social insurance programs generally are consistent with the principles of social justice, but parts of certain programs clearly violate the norms of social justice; (2) social insurance programs are especially powerful in reducing the poverty rate and poverty gap for the elderly, but are generally ineffective in reducing the poverty rate for single-parent families with related children under age 18; (3) social insurance programs have only a minor impact in reducing the poverty rate among married-couple families with related children under age 18; and (4) although the Social Security payroll results in a small increase in the poverty rate, social insurance programs are especially effective in reducing income inequality.     

Regional Insurance and Migration

A dynamic model of migration is developed to study whether labor mobility can hedge people against region-specific shocks, making private or public insurance redundant. The model adopts a novel timing for migration, which is argued to be the time frame suitable for analyzing risk-sharing issues. It also innovates on the existing literature by solving individual migration through convexification of the set of actions. The results show that the role of migration as an insurance mechanism is small: labor mobility cannot fully remove income differentials between regions. It is also shown that a fiscal stabilization scheme is, in general, optimal; moreover, any pure risk-sharing mechanism has no influence on migration flows.     

不同生育率情形下养老保险筹资模式比较研究

理论研究普遍认为,基金制养老保险筹资模式优于现收现付制,但这几乎都是基于人均资本视角的判断。本文在外生和内生生育率两种情形下,从福利经济学视角分析基金制是否完全优于现收现付制。理论模型表明,在一定参数组合下,无论外生生育率还是内生生育率,都存在使现收现付制下社会福利高于基金制下社会福利的养老保险缴费率。模型的数值模拟显示,存在使现收现付制下社会福利更高的养老保险缴费率,且在外生生育率下（符合我国生育政策）现收现付制缴费率在12%左右社会福利最高,内生生育率下（符合发达国家生育政策）现收现付制缴费率在6%左右社会福利最高。前一数值与已有研究成果观点相近(我国社会统筹部分缴费率应下降到15%左右),后一数值与美国（62%）、日本（77%）等发达国家现收现付制养老保险缴费率相近。稳健性检验显示,只要参数赋值在合理范围内,数值模拟主要结论不变。本文为降低现行我国社会统筹部分养老保险缴费率提供了理论借鉴。     

城镇居民基本医疗保险适度缴费率分析

城镇居民基本医疗保险缴费率是指把城镇居民纳入基本医疗保险体系后,从社会平均水平看,在一定时期内(通常为一个月)各参与主体为城镇居民所缴纳的基本医疗保险费占工资的比重。通过构建城镇居民基本医疗保险适度缴费率模型,根据模型对城镇居民基本医疗保险适度缴费率进行测算,对现行城镇居民基本医疗保险实际缴费率的适度状况进行了判断,并提出相应的策略选择。     

基于PPP模式的海洋灾害保险合作模式分析

基于我国灾害救助以政府为主、商业性模式开发不足,且海洋灾害风险管理实践发展相对落后的现实,以PPP模式为雏形的灾害保险不失为一种有益的尝试。针对海洋灾害保险存在的信息不对称与主体地位不对等问题,在引入再保险机构、构建新的不对称PPP参与模式基础上,运用灰博弈模型对各主体参与的动态博弈过程及稳定策略进行分析,利用原保险与再保险双维灰博弈矩阵,求得各参数情形下的稳定策略,并对各情形下的稳定策略实现路径进行具体解析,为海洋灾害保险合作模式的达成提供进一步的决策参考