社会保险中的道德风险及其遏制

道德风险来自人的机会主义倾向，是给他人和社会带来不利后果的人为风险。道德风险在社会保险领域发生的频率最高、分布最广、造成损失最大、防范难度也最高。被保险人试图利用自己掌握的信息优势，在追求自身效益最大化的同时做出损害保险人利益的行为。道德风险在社会保险的所有项目上都存在相应的表现及危害。针对社会保险中道德风险产生的原因，应从完善社会保险立法、增强查处力度、设计约束与激励并重的机制、建立信息对称机制及诚信自律机制等方面遏制社会保险的道德风险。     

Moral hazard and sickness insurance

We study if the replacement level in the Swedish national sickness insurance, which replaces foregone earnings due to temporary illnesses, affects work absence behavior. We use micro data and estimate the effects of a major reform, whereby the replacement level during the first 90 days in each absence spell was reduced, on work attendance. To separate out the effect of the reform from any trend in work absence, we distinguish between the implications on the incidence of work absence (i.e., the frequency of spells) and the duration of the spells. We also use a regression-discontinuity approach to estimate the effects on the prevalence of work absence. Finally, we estimate elasticities with respect to the replacement level in the sickness insurance.     

Moral hazard,adverse selection,and the optimal provision of social insurance

The single-period social insurance model of Diamond and Mirrlees is extended to allow for a diversity of types (in the probability of becoming disabled). When individual type is observable, the utilitarian optimum has both consumption when working and disability benefits increasing with the probability of disability. When type is not observable (adverse selection is present), the optimum is a single ‘pooling’ policy over a wide range of welfare weights which includes the utilitarian case. These results also provide insights into the potential distributional effects of moral hazard and the ways moral hazard and adverse selection problems may interact.     

Moral hazard,insurance claims,and repeated insurance contracts

Abstract The paper develops a simple model of repeated automobile insurance contracts, providing a framework for analyzing changes in aggregate insurance data in periods of changes that affect driver incentives. Experience rating of premiums gives drivers an incentive to exert effort to avoid accidents (ex ante moral hazard), and an incentive to hide accidents (ex post moral hazard). The empirical analysis, using data from the competitive insurance markets in Ontario and Alberta over a period of major legislative changes in Ontario, suggests that much of the recent decline in accidents in Ontario was due to an increased incentive to hide accidents.     

Moral hazard and Marshallian inefficiency: Evidence from Tunisia

We formalize the link between optimal cost-sharing contracts and the production technology in the presence of moral hazard by appealing to several well-known results from duality theory. Building on intuitions from the interlinkage literature, we show that optimal contractual structure is determined by the (i) substitution possibilities that exist between different observable factor inputs, as well as (ii) between these inputs and unobservable effort. We endogenize contractual choice using landlord characteristics as instruments, exploiting the fact that, in our dataset, landlords interact with several tenants and vice versa. The approach is applied to an unbalanced plot-level panel of cost-sharing contracts in a Tunisian village, using a translog representation of the restricted profit function. Contractual terms are found to be a significant determinant of input use and therefore lead to Marshallian inefficiency, while the optimality of the underlying contractual structure is rejected.     

中国失业社会保险制度改革探讨

当前,我国的失业社会保险制度出现了统筹层次低、覆盖面较窄、促进再就业的功能弱化等问题,需要通过适时提高统筹层次、扩大企业社会保险的覆盖面和完善失业社会保险促进再就业等措施进一步改革完善。     

Moral hazard,competition and contract design: empirical evidence from managerial,franchised and entrepreneurial businesses in Norway

Agency theory emphasizes the role of ownership, control and incentives in encouraging managers to improve efficiency. Owners often tie managers to contracts that reduce conflict of interest between owners and managers. The differences between alternative business ownership structures have been investigated. According to theory, we expect managers with an outcome-dependent dealer contract to be more efficient than managers with a more integrated and less performance based employee dealer contract. We also analyse how competitive pressure might reduce the moral hazard problem and therefore affect contract design. Berle and Means (The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Macmillan, New York, 1932) long ago stated that the market mechanism could constrain the agency problem. Even so, this problem has scarcely been investigated empirically. This paper also considers the contractual effect of potential monitoring costs, education and relationship age in a model tested on data from 175 dealer contracts in a multinational oil company.     

Intergovernmental grants as a tactical instrument: empirical evidence from Swedish municipalities

Are grants to Swedish municipalities tactical, that is, do parties use these in order to get elected? In this paper, the theoretical model of Lindbeck and Weibull and Dixit and Londregan is tested, using panel data on 255 Swedish municipalities for the years 1981–1995. The empirical implication of the theory is that groups with many swing voters will receive larger grants than other groups. In the paper, a new method of estimating the number of swing voters is proposed and used. The results support the hypothesis that intergovernmental grants are used in order to win votes.     

Health insurance and the demand for medical care: evidence from a randomized experiment.

We estimate how cost sharing, the portion of the bill the patient pays, affects the demand for medical services. The data come from a randomized experiment. A catastrophic insurance plan reduces expenditures 31 percent relative to zero out-of-pocket price. The price elasticity is approximately -0.2. We reject the hypothesis that less favorable coverage of outpatient services increases total expenditure (for example, by deterring preventive care or inducing hospitalization).     

Religiosity and social trust: evidence from Canada

Using the latest wave of the Canadian Ethnic Diversity Survey, I investigate whether religious identity and religious intensity associate with the degree to which people trust others, controlling for a wide range of characteristics. The analysis shows that Canadian Roman Catholics are appreciably less trusting than mainline Protestants, and religious nones are situated in between these two groups. With regard to religious intensity, I find that higher commitment negatively correlates with trust in unknown others for Roman Catholics. The reverse is true for Protestants. Results also show stark cross-denominational variations within Protestantism, as two highly committed denominations of Mennonite and Pentecostal are found to be the most and the least trusting religious groups in Canada. No non-Christian religious minority is found statistically significantly less trusting than Canadian Roman Catholics. Considering particularized trust in one’s neighbours and co-workers yields comparable conclusions.     

Quantitative analysis of health insurance reform: Separating regulation from redistribution

Two key components of the recent U.S. health reform are a new regulation of the individual health insurance market and an increase in income redistribution in the economy. Which component contributes more to the welfare outcome of the reform? We address this question by constructing a general equilibrium life-cycle model that incorporates both medical expenses and labor income risks. We replicate the key features of the current health insurance system in the U.S. and calibrate the model using the Medical Expenditures Panel Survey dataset. We find that the reform decreases the number of uninsured more than twice and generates substantial welfare gains. These welfare gains mostly come from the redistributive measures embedded in the reform, rather than from the regulatory changes.     

Moral hazard and incentives in a decentralized planning environment

The relationship between the center and the socialist manager in a decentralized planning environment is modeled in this article as one between principal and agent. A class of incentive contracts is examined in which, besides a sharing rule, the center stipulates an outcome target the manager must achieve; otherwise he will be paid a fixed payment. It is shown that the optimal incentive target is the lower bound of all feasible targets, while the optimal sharing rule is strictly locally convex at the optimal target.     

Exploring outward FDI and the choice of destination: evidence from Swedish firm-level data

Using Swedish firm-level data on all firms and their affiliates abroad, we investigate what observable firm and country characteristics affect the size of an affiliate in a particular destination. We employ the richness of the data to investigate the importance of destination country factors in explaining firm outward FDI activities and distinguish between the factors that affect such activities in manufacturing versus services firms as well as vertical versus horizontal investments. Our results lend support to existing theories of multinational activity of manufacturing but not services firms. We also find observable differences between vertical and horizontal manufacturing firms that are not always explained by theory.     

Private insurance subsidies and public health care markets: evidence from Canada

In this study I examine the effects of government subsidies to employer-provided health insurance on the decision to purchase insurance, and on utilization of publicly funded health services. Using unique variation in tax subsidies across Canadian provinces as an instrument, I estimate the effects of these subsidies on the demand for supplemental health insurance and their extended effects on the decision to use publicly-funded health services. My results show that government subsidies through tax exemptions have significant effects on the decision to purchase insurance. Furthermore, additional insurance policies lead to moral hazard in the use of publicly funded health services. JEL Classification: H2,H4, I1     

Job search and unemployment insurance: New evidence from time use data

This paper provides new evidence on job search intensity of the unemployed in the U.S., modeling job search intensity as time allocated to job search activities. The major findings are: 1) the average U.S. unemployed worker devotes about 41 min to job search on weekdays, which is substantially more than their European counterparts; 2) workers who expect to be recalled by their previous employer search substantially less than the average unemployed worker; 3) across the 50 states and D.C., job search is inversely related to the generosity of unemployment benefits, with an elasticity between ?1.6 and ?2.2; 4) job search intensity for those eligible for Unemployment Insurance (UI) increases prior to benefit exhaustion; and 5) time devoted to job search is fairly constant regardless of unemployment duration for those who are ineligible for UI.     

Minimum standards, insurance regulation and adverse selection: evidence from the Medigap market

This paper examines the implications of minimum standards for insurance markets. I study the imposition of binding minimum standards on the market for voluntary private health insurance for the elderly. The central estimates suggest that the introduction of the standards was associated with an 8 percentage point (25%) decrease in the proportion of the population with coverage in the affected market, with no evidence of substitution toward other, unregulated sources of insurance coverage. To explore possible factors contributing to the impact of the minimum standards, I develop comparative static predictions of the impact of imposing minimum standards in an insurance market with adverse selection. The observed changes in market equilibrium associated with the minimum standards are broadly consistent with these predictions, providing evidence of the existence of adverse selection in this insurance market. More importantly, they suggest that the presence of adverse selection—which in principle may provide an economic rationale for minimum standards—in practice may have exacerbated the declines in insurance coverage associated with the minimum standards.     

Deposit insurance and moral hazard problem: the case of Turkish banking system

We investigate the effect of full deposit insurance introduced in 1994 on the financial performance of Turkish commercial banks. We construct a model, under reasonable assumptions, with deposit insurance where banks undertake excessive risk –?moral hazard risk. Empirical investigation using experimental design approach supports our moral hazard hypothesis. Our findings indicate that banks subject to the moral hazard behaviour show significant increases in foreign exchange position risk and deterioration in capital adequacy relative to their benchmark after introduction of full deposit insurance system. We relate this excessive risk-taking to the moral hazard behaviour by commercial banks. The research results indicate that complete deposit insurance system distorts the incentive structure of commercial banks and thus, prevents proper functioning of market discipline mechanism and leads to the taking excessive risk-taking.     

Moral self-licencing and social dilemmas: an experimental analysis from a taking game in Madagascar

This article explores whether previous good deeds may license antisocial behaviour, such as appropriating a social surplus for private benefits, in a developing country context, namely Madagascar. We design a two-step framed experiment, with one control treatment (a neutral task) and three test treatments (tasks enabling subjects to earn moral credits in three different ways), followed by a taking game in which subjects are given the opportunity to take an amount from a fund allocated to their University. On average, we find that participants in the three licencing conditions appropriate more than those in the control group and that further differences emerge according to the way the moral credits have been earned.