Private Information in Life Insurance,Annuity, and Health Insurance Markets

Economic theory predicts that private information on risks in insurance markets leads to adverse selection. To counterbalance private information, insurers collect and use information on applicants to assess their risk and to calculate premiums in an underwriting process. Using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), this paper documents that differences in the information used in underwriting across life insurance, annuity, and health insurance markets attenuate private information to different extents. The results are in line with – and might help to reconcile – the mixed empirical evidence on adverse selection across these markets.     

Competitive Insurance Markets with Two Unobservables

I study a screening game in a competitive insurance market in which insurance customers differ with respect to both accident probability and degree of risk aversion. It is shown that indifference curves of customers may cross twice; thus the single crossing property does not hold. When differences in risk aversion are sufficiently large, firms cannot use policy deductibles to screen high-risk customers. Types may be pooled in equilibrium or are separated by raising premiums above actuarially fair levels. This leads to excessive entry of firms in equilibrium.     

Insurance with Frequency Trading: A Dynamic Analysis of Efficient Insurance Markets

This paper extends existing insurance results on the type of insurance contracts needed for insurance market efficiency to a dynamic setting. It introduces continuously open markets that allow for more efficient asset allocation. It also estimates the role of preferences and endowments in the classification of risks, which is done primarily in terms of the actuarial properties of the underlying risk process. The paper further extends insurability to include correlated and catastrophic events. Under these very general conditions the paper defines a condition that determines whether a small number of standard insurance contracts (together with aggregate assets) suffice to complete markets or one needs to introduce such assets as mutual insurance. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D81, D99, G11.     

Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Markets: A Classroom Experiment

Adverse selection as it relates to health care policy will be a key economic issue in many upcoming elections. In this article, the author lays out a 30-minute classroom experiment designed for students to experience the kind of elevated prices and market collapse that can result from adverse selection in health insurance markets. The students should come away from the experiment understanding why adverse selection leads to high prices on good quality insurance and why it forces healthy individuals into low quality plans. Additionally, the experiment helps students think about the market characteristics that make health insurance particularly vulnerable to problems of asymmetric information. Finally, the experiment connects the adverse selection problem with key features of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.     

中国保险市场与金融发展互动关系的实证研究

本文通过基于向量误差修正VEC模型的因果关系检验和Granger因果关系检验,分析我国各类保险市场发展水平和金融发展之间的长期与短期关系.虽然用M2/GDP和金融相关率FIR作为金融发展衡量指标所得的结果有所差异,但就总体而言,保险市场的发展与金融发展存在脱节现象,伴随金融发展而引起保险服务需求的增加对保险市场发展的促进作用仍相对微弱.随着金融体系的不断完善,金融发展对保险业的促进作用将会逐步加强.     

Complementarity in contests

To facilitate the study of contests in general equilibrium, we examine winner-take-all contests in which the prize is complementary to the effort of the contestants, as inputs are in production functions or final goods in utility functions. We focus on the effects of technological factors and endowments on the effort and the welfare of the contestants. Most of our findings differ considerably from the standard model of contests in which prize and effort are independent. In particular, we find a critical role for the elasticity of substitution between prize and effort. For example, under low elasticities of substitution, a higher prize reduces the effort exerted by the contestants.     

保险市场竞争程度与市场结构的关系研究

本文运用H统计量研究我国财寿险市场的竞争程度,并进一步通过回归分析与相关分析研究竞争程度与市场结构的交互影响因素.研究结果表明,1999-2006年间我国的财险市场可以判断为垄断竞争的市场结构,而同期我国寿险市场则属于寡头垄断的市场结构.2003年保险业费率市场化的改革对财险和寿险都有明显的影响,直接加剧了竞争程度.竞争度与财险市场公司数量正相关,与寿险市场公司数量负相关.竞争度与集中度的关系在财险业为负相关,而在寿险业根据采用不同的集中度指标的不同考察结果会有所不同.     

On the Benefits From Rigid Labour Markets: Norms, Market Failures, and Social Insurance

The common view that far-reaching labour market deregulation is the only remedy for high European unemployment is too simplistic. First, the evidence suggests that deeply rooted social customs are an important cause of wage rigidity, going beyond the legal constraints emphasised in the political debate. Second, in a second-best setting, a compressed wage structure may generate an efficiency gain. Finally, based on simple plots of the relation between labour market institutions and openness in OECD countries, I conclude that the globalisation of economic activity may lead to increased demand for various labour market rigidities.     

Complementarity, Instability and Multiplicity

A multiplicity of equilibria, steady states, cycles, etc., feature prominently in models with complementarities. Multiplicity suggests the instability of an economic system and the sensitive dependence of the equilibrium behaviour on the environment. In this paper I discuss some methodological questions concerning the economics of complementarity, with special emphasis on instability and multiplicity. A series of monopolistic competition models are developed to illustrate the argument.
JEL Classification Numbers: B41, E32, O00     

Strategic Complementarity in Direct Investments

The paper investigates a three‐country duopoly model. Two developed countries have large markets and one developing country has a cost advantage. The author finds that strategic complementarity in location choice yields multiple equilibria. One is a cost‐oriented agglomeration of firms in the developing country and the other is a market‐oriented equilibrium where each firm locates in its developed home country. Also, private incentives for the cost‐oriented location are excessive (resp. insufficient) from the viewpoint of world welfare if firms choose their locations non‐cooperatively (resp. cooperatively).     

Rehabilitating Weak Complementarity

Using weak complementarity to determine willingness to pay for nonmarket goods is problematic. This note offers a procedure for determining an agent's marginal willingness to pay for a nonmarket good under this assumption that mitigates these problems.
JEL Classification : D 6; H 4; Q 2     

Capital–Skill Complementarity and Inequality in Sweden

Income inequality increased in Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s, as did the returns to higher education. The main conclusion of this study is that increased income inequality between high‐ and low‐skilled workers is demand driven and is due to the presence of capital–skill complementarity in production. Increased investments in new, more efficient capital equipment, along with a slowdown in the growth rate of skilled labor, have raised the ratio of effective capital inputs per skilled worker, which, in turn, has increased the relative demand (and market return) for skilled labor through the capital–skill complementarity mechanism.     

Complementarity, growth, and trade

We consider an endogenous growth model with international trade in complementary capital goods. The model possesses several distinct, balanced growth solutions, which we classify using stability under adaptive learning. Some of the equilibria can involve growth rates much higher than others. We show that, in addition to a small (usually positive) effect on a given equilibrium, an expansion in trade may sometimes yield a much larger, sudden jump in growth. The small effect on the initial equilibrium may reduce growth if the opportunity cost of capital rises very fast as growth accelerates. JEL Classification: F12, F15, O41
Complémentarité, croissance, et commerce international. Les auteurs utilisent un modèle de croissance endogène en présence de commerce international de biens capitaux complémentaires. Le modèle possède plusieurs solutions de croissance équilibrée distinctes que les auteurs classifient en utilisant des mesures de stabilité avec apprentissage adaptatif. Certains de ces équilibres peuvent impliquer des taux de croissance plus élevés que d'autres. Il appert qu'une expansion du commerce international, en plus d'avoir un petit effet (habituellement positif) sur un équilibre donné, peut parfois engendrer une augmentation plus forte et soudaine de la croissance. Le petit effet sur l'équilibre initial peut réduire la croissance si le coût d'opportunité du capital augmente rapidement à proportion que la croissance accélère.     

Do Consumers Purchase Too Much Health Insurance? The Role of Market Power in Health‐Care Markets

Several authors have suggested that consumers purchase too much health insurance in private markets. We readdress this issue within a model that combines excess health‐care demand due to health insurance with market power due to monopolistic production of health‐care services. We evaluate the market equilibrium in terms of consumer welfare and social welfare. The consumer welfare criterion suggests that in the market equilibrium consumers in fact purchase too much health insurance coverage. The social welfare criterion, in contrast, suggests that because profits of the health‐care industry are properly accounted for, consumers should purchase more insurance coverage than they choose to do in the market equilibrium.     

Insurance Taxation and Insurance Fraud

It is common practice in the United States to impose a sales tax on insurance premiums. Insurance benefits are not taxed, and it is typically argued that they should not be taxed because they compensate for a loss. In this paper I present a case where the taxation of insurance benefits is preferable to the taxation of premiums. When insurance fraud is present—in the form of ex post moral hazard—a tax on insurance premiums increases the number of fraudulent claims in the economy, whereas a tax on insurance benefits may reduce fraud. More importantly, however, policyholders are made better off with a benefit tax than with a premium tax.     

Experimentation in Markets

We present a model of entry and exit with Bayesian learning and price competition. A new product of initially unknown quality is introduced in the market, and purchases of the product yield information on its true quality. We assume that the performance of the new product is publicly observable. As agents learn from the experiments of others, informational externalities arise.
We determine the Markov Perfect Equilibrium prices and allocations. In a single market, the combination of the informational externalities among the buyers and the strategic pricing by the sellers results in excessive experimentation. If the new product is launched in many distinct markets, the path of sales converges to the efficient path in the limit as the number of markets grows.