Does Social Capital Reduce Moral Hazard? A Network Model for Non‐Life Insurance Demand*

We study the effect of social capital in an environment in which formal, marketed insurance contracts coexist with informal agreements. We show that in the absence of peer monitoring and social pressure, non‐marketed contracts crowd out formal ones due to moral hazard. We prove, by means of an equilibrium concept typical of the network literature, that social capital can reduce moral hazard in informal agreements. We then show that under certain conditions, social capital increases the demand for marketed insurance contracts. The theoretical model we outline provides us clear guidance to measure social capital in a provincial‐level data set. The empirical model, which is estimated controlling for panel and spatial structure, supports our claim that social capital increases the demand for non‐life insurance.     

存在道德风险的医院等级选择与最优公共医疗保险合同

通过构造一个医疗服务系统的均衡模型,分析了医院等级、居民道德风险与最优公共医疗保险合同之间的关系。研究表明只存在公共医疗保险体系时,如果政府部门之间缺乏协调机制,各自为政,中国的公共医疗保险支付方式将不能实现社会最优并消除道德风险;公共医疗保险合同可能引起社会福利的损失或引致道德风险。政府应该完善医院评价系统,对不同医院的水平给予准确的评级,特别是要建立起政府各部门之间的协调机制;理顺医疗服务价格体系;鼓励更多市场参与主体进入医疗保险领域,建立合理的疾病风险分担机制。     

On the Role of Patience in an Insurance Market With Asymmetric Information

We analyze a two-period competitive insurance market that is characterized by the simultaneous presence of moral hazard and adverse selection with regard to consumer time preferences. It is shown that there exists an equilibrium in which patient consumers use high effort and buy an insurance contract with high coverage, whereas impatient consumers use low effort and buy a contract with low coverage or even remain uninsured. This finding may help to explain why the opposite of adverse selection with regard to risk types can sometimes be observed empirically.     

Leaving the darkness: The emergence of shadow banks

This paper studies the interaction between bank capital regulation, moral hazard and co-existence of traditional and shadow banks. Bank managers can choose between traditional banking and off-balance sheet special purpose vehicles (SPV), in a setup with deposit insurance and moral hazard. We first show that in the absence of SPV intermediation, capital requirements are ineffective at preventing the moral hazard problem originated by deposit insurance. We find that shadow banks can improve financial stability, when there is full information sharing. Finally, we analyze the case of neglected tail risk. We find that under such circumstances, the SPV will increase financial risk by exposing the system to extreme events.     

The pricing of deposit insurance considering bankruptcy costs and closure policies

The paper aims to study the pricing issue of deposit insurance with explicit consideration of bankruptcy costs and closure policies. Full coverage from deposit insurance is imposed by many regulators to stabilize the banking system in the current financial crisis, despite of the potential moral hazard problems. We argue that bankruptcy cost is an important factor in pricing deposit insurance, especially when the insured institution is insolvent. Applying the isomorphic relationship between deposit insurance and put option, we first derive a closed-form solution for the pricing model with bankruptcy costs and closure policies. Then, we modify the barrier option approach to price the deposit insurance in which the bankruptcy cost is set as a function of asset return volatility and more realistic closure policies considering possible forbearance can be accounted for. The properties of the models are supported by numerical simulations and are consistent with the risk-based pricing scheme.     

Perspectives of Risk Sharing

In this paper we present an overview of the standard risk sharing model of insurance. We discuss and characterize a competitive equilibrium, Pareto optimality, and representative agent pricing, including its implications for insurance premiums. We only touch upon the existence problem of a competitive equilibrium, primarily by presenting several examples. Risk tolerance and aggregation is the subject of one section. Risk adjustment of the probability measure is one topic, as well as the insurance version of the capital asset pricing model. The competitive paradigm may be a little demanding in practice, so we alternatively present a game theoretic view of risk sharing, where solutions end up in the core. Properly interpreted, this may give rise to a range of prices of each risk, often visualized in practice by an ask price and a bid price. The nice aspect of this is that these price ranges can be explained by "first principles", not relying on transaction costs or other frictions. We also include a short discussion of moral hazard in risk sharing between an insurer and a prospective insurance buyer. We end the paper by indicating the implications of our results for a pure stock market. In particular we find it advantageous to discuss the concepts of incomplete markets in this general setting, where it is possible to use results for closed, convex subspaces of an L 2 -space to discuss optimal risk allocation problems in incomplete financial markets.     

金融创新如何缓解信任品市场失灵?——中国食品安全责任强制保险的自然实验

信任品市场(如食品、医药等)存在的问题一直困扰着中国和世界很多国家。关于产品和服务质量的信息不对称(道德风险和逆向选择)会导致信任品市场失灵。缓解信任品市场失灵,一种常见的解决方案是政府监管;而经济学家认为更加基于市场的解决方案(例如强制责任保险等金融创新)可能更为有效。在理论上,强制责任保险有两种相反的效应:保险公司的监督减少了道德风险 vs. 保险加剧了企业的道德风险,但一直亟待实证检验。幸运的是,中国食品安全责任强制保险的改革实验走在了世界的前列。本文利用了中国在不同地区、不同时间推行的这个自然实验,通过双重差分的方法识别出责任保险对于信任品市场的因果效应。本文的研究发现,强制责任保险能显著降低食品安全事故发生概率。这表明政府强制推行的金融创新可以成为信任品市场失灵的一种有效的替代性解决方案。     

基于道德风险视角的资本类逆周期监管工具的比较分析

2007—2009年的全球金融风暴使监管者最终认识到宏观审慎管理的重要性,其主要目的是缓解顺周期问题。然而,我们认为宏观审慎管理可以兼顾"大而不能倒"的金融机构引发的道德风险问题。本文对这一问题做了初步性的探索,结论为:时间可变的资本充足率不能很好地解决"大而不能倒"的金融机构所面临的道德风险问题;或有资本可以部分解决金融机构的道德风险问题;救助保险基金能够很好地解决道德风险问题。     

农业保险可以减轻自然灾害对农业经济的负面影响吗?

建立融合自然灾害、农业保险以及道德风险的动态模型.模型显示:自然灾害会降低农业产出,而农业保险可以降低自然灾害对农业生产的负面影响,但前提是道德风险的影响较小.实证表明,每增加1元农业保险保费对应的保障水平,可以降低由自然灾害导致的第一产业产出约8.19元的损失.同时,未发现农业保险市场在省级加总层面存在显著的道德风险.     

Alternative Solutions to Underinvestment, Under Equity and Credit Rationing

We compare alternative solutions to underinvestment (UI) problems in firms subject to limited access to equity markets, interest ceilings, and constraints on the volume of debt. Collaterals (assets or compensating balances) and credit insurance ('regular' or 'outcome' insurance whereby the premium is paid at the end of the insurance period) are compared on the basis to their costs and their effective use of financial sources. It is shown that when there is no moral hazard problem, credit insurance is the most effective instrument. Otherwise, 'outcome' insurance program is the most effective one.     

Alternative Solutions to Underinvestment, Under Equity and Credit Rationing

We compare alternative solutions to underinvestment (UI) problems in firms subject to limited access to equity markets, interest ceilings, and constraints on the volume of debt. Collaterals (assets or compensating balances) and credit insurance ('regular' or 'outcome' insurance whereby the premium is paid at the end of the insurance period) are compared on the basis to their costs and their effective use of financial sources. It is shown that when there is no moral hazard problem, credit insurance is the most effective instrument. Otherwise, 'outcome' insurance program is the most effective one.     

Multiple Losses, EX ANTE Moral Hazard, and the Implications for Umbrella Policies

Under certain cost conditions the optimal insurance policy offers full coverage above a deductible, as Arrow and others have shown. However, many insurance policies currently provide coverage against several losses although the possibilities for the insured to affect the loss probabilities by several prevention activities (multiple moral hazard) are substantially different. This article shows that optimal contracts under multiple moral hazard generally call for complex reimbursement schedules. It also examines the conditions under which different types of risks can optimally be covered by a single insurance policy and argues that the case for umbrella policies under multiple moral hazard is limited in practice.     

Der Einfluss einer staatlichen Grundsicherung auf die Versicherungsnachfrage bei asymmetrischer Informationsverteilung

In this article, we develop a model framework in which the influence of a state assistance on insurance demand in an insurance market with imperfect information can be examined. It turned out that a state subsidy of very low level has no influence on the insurance demand at all. If the state assistance is adequately high, the individuals will prefer government assistance to market insurance. In case of adverse selection, a state assistance can have the consequence that the good risks decide not to buy any insurance while the bad risks purchase full insurance cover. The state assistance can therefore contribute to solve the problem of adverse selection. In case of moral hazard, a surprising result has been found out. The state assistance can bring the measures of loss minimizing to a standstill before the insurance can do it. The state subsidy amplifies the moral hazard behaviour and is therefore not a suitable instrument to solve problems with moral hazard.     

Financial Innovation in the Management of Catastrophe Risk

Like the preceding article, this article argues that the high costs of reinsurance present the opportunity for hedging instruments to be offered to primary insurers that are both competitive with current reinsurance and that offer investors high rates of return. But the combination of high reinsurance premiums and the vast capacity of the capital market for diversification is not sufficient to ensure the success of these new instruments. If new instruments such as catastrophe options and catastrophelinked bonds are to compete successfully with reinsurance, they must provide a cost-effective means of resolving incentive conflicts between the primary insurer and the ultimate risk bearer that are known as "moral hazard." Without an effective solution of this moral hazard problem, the use of past insurance loss data to estimate the potential returns for purchasers of catastrophe bonds and other such instruments will be misleading and unreliable.
As the author demonstrates, both traditional reinsurance and each of the new catastrophe hedging instruments presents insurance companies and other hedgers with the challenge of managing a different combination of moral hazard, credit risk, and basis risk. For example, traditional catastrophe reinsurance is subject to significant credit risk and moral hazard, but little if any basis risk. By contrast, both catastrophe options and bonds can be designed in ways that reduce moral hazard and credit risk, but at the cost of taking on some basis risk. The risk manager's task in such circumstances is to design an instrument that embodies the optimal, or cost-minimizing, trade-off among these three sources of risk.     

Deposit insurance and subsidized recapitalizations

The 2007–2009 financial crisis saw a vast expansion in deposit insurance guarantees around the world and yet our understanding of the design and consequences of deposit insurance schemes is in its infancy. We provide a new rationale for the provision of deposit insurance. In our model the banking sector exhibits both adverse selection and moral hazard, which implies that the social benefits of bank monitoring must for incentive reasons be shared between depositors and banks. Consequently, socially too few deposits are made in equilibrium. Deposit insurance – or, equivalently, bank recapitalization – corrects this market failure. We find that deposit insurance should be funded not by banks or depositors but out of general taxation. The optimal level of deposit insurance varies inversely with the quality of the banking system. Hence, when the soundness of the financial sector is uncertain, governments should consider supporting deposit insurance schemes and undertaking subsidized recapitalizations.     

Taming Systemically Important Financial Institutions

We model a systemically important financial institution that is too big (or too interconnected) to fail. Without credible regulation and strong supervision, the shareholders of this institution might deliberately let its managers take excessive risk. We propose a solution to this problem, showing how insurance against systemic shocks can be provided without generating moral hazard. The solution involves levying a systemic tax needed to cover the costs of future crises and more importantly establishing a systemic risk authority endowed with special resolution powers, including the control of bankers’ compensation packages during crisis periods.     

国外银行存款保险制度的道德风险问题研究

存款保险制度的道德风险问题是指商业银行在存款保险制度的保护下有动机承担过度风险、追求超额利润、从而可能导致银行业危机的问题,是存款保险制度的核心理论问题,也是存款保险制度能否持续的关键问题,更是一国政府如何对商业银行进行监管的重大问题。对国外银行存款保险制度的道德风险的相关文献进行综述和分析的基础上,认为传统的存款保险制度存在严重的道德风险,其制度运行成本高昂,需要对存款保险制度进行改革和加强对商业银行的监管。建议我国建立存款保险制度需要考虑避免道德风险问题。     

信息共享、风险分担与农村银保互动机制

通过保险分散农村信贷所蕴含的风险是农村信贷风险分担的重要途径,也是农村金融发展的主要趋势。农村银保间信息共享可以有效防止信息不对称造成的逆向选择;农村银保间风险分担可以通过利益捆绑和激励相容解决道德风险。通过研究张家界市的＂信贷＋保险＂缔约过程与履约条件发现,银保合约创新分担了信贷机构的信贷风险,改善了缔约中的信息结构,降低了保险机构的运行成本,提高了农村金融体系的效率。     

Ex Post Moral Hazard and Bayesian Learning in Insurance

We study a dynamic insurance market with asymmetric information and ex post moral hazard. In our model, the insurance buyer's risk type is unknown to the insurer; moreover, the buyer has the option of not reporting losses. The insurer sets premia according to the buyer's experience rating, computed via Bayesian estimation based on buyer's history of reported claims. Accordingly, the buyer has strategic incentive to withhold information about losses. We construct an insurance market information equilibrium model and show that a variety of reporting strategies are possible. The results are illustrated with explicit computations in a two‐period risk‐neutral case study.     

An experimental approach to the effectiveness of an incentive system against moral hazard in the insurance market

Although traditional Japanese insurance theory has tended to assume the basic altruism of policyholders, this assumption may not be warranted. Many people might be opportunists rather than altruists. So in the actual insurance market, moral hazard may occur not accidentally but naturally. Without effective incentive mechanisms, policyholders may deviate from their original purpose. It is important to design penalties as negative incentives for the control and prevention of moral hazard. We test these propositions here by means of a game theory and questionnaire. The reason why we use a game theory and carry out the questionnaire is that it is not suitable to apply the econometric model to collect reliable data about moral hazard.