Suchergebnisse

Support from the Government of Catalonia project 2005SGR00836 and the Barcelona GSE Research Network, as well as from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, project ECO2009-07616 and CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010(CSD2006-0016) ; Altres ajuts: CONSOLIDER-INGENIO/CSD2006-0016 ; We consider a population of individuals who differ in two dimensions, their risk type (expected loss) and their risk aversion, and solve for the profit-maximising menu of contracts that a monopolistic insurer puts out on the market. Our findings are threefold. First, it is never optimal to fully separate all the types. Second, if heterogeneity in risk aversion is sufficiently high, then some high-risk individuals (the risk-tolerant ones) will obtain lower coverage than some low-risk individuals (the risk-averse ones). Third, because women tend to be more risk averse than men (in that the risk aversion distribution for women first-order stochastically dominates that for men), gender discrimination may lead to a Pareto improvement.

Vera-Hernández acknowledges support from the ESRC Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy (RES-544-28-0001). Olivella acknowledges the support of the Government of Catalonia, project 2009SGR-169; as well as from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, project ECO2009-07616 and CONSOLIDER-INGENIO CSD2006-16. Olivella is a Research Fellow of MOVE. ; Altres ajuts: RES-544-28-0001 ; We test for asymmetric information in the UK private health insurance (PHI) market. In contrast to earlier research that considers either a purely private system or one where private insurance is complementary to public insurance, PHI is substitutive of the public system in the UK. Using a theoretical model of competition among insurers incorporating this characteristic, we link the type of selection (adverse or propitious) with the existence of risk-related information asymmetries. Using the British Household Panel Survey, we find evidence that adverse selection is present in the PHI market, which leads us to conclude that such information asymmetries exist.

Altres ajuts: P01AG005842 ; Altres ajuts: RC4AG039036 ; Altres ajuts: ICMIS130002 ; We study the consequences of imposing a minimum coverage in an insurance market where enrollment is mandatory and agents have private information on their true risk type. If the regulation is not too stringent, the equilibrium is separating in which a single insurer monopolizes the high risks while the rest attract the low risks, all at positive profits. Hence individuals, regardless of their type, "subsidize" insurers. If the legislation is sufficiently stringent the equilibrium is pooling, all insurers just break even and low risks subsidize high risks. None of these results require resorting to non-Nash equilibrium notions.