The share of the public sector in health insurance provision varies enormously from country to country. It is larger in more redistributive countries. We provide a possible theoretical explanation for these facts: a public health insurance system, financed by taxes, can be an efficient means of...

Two justifications can be found for the use of a system of bonuses and penalties in automobile insurance. The first refers to risk selection, the second to the inducement to greater prudence at the wheel. Based on a model which incorporates both factors, it appears that the system of bonuses and...

To share the fixed cost of a communication network, the private-cost method allocates to each subscriber the cost of his dedicated terminal devices. The external-cost method shares the connecting cost of user i among all of his correspondents in proportion to their traffic with i. All convex...

We examine how risk-sharing is impacted by asymmetric information on the probability distribution of wealth. We define the optimal incentive compatible agreements in a two-agent model with two levels of wealth. When there is complete information on the probability of the different outcomes, the...