We develop a model of undescribable events. Examples of events that are well understood by economic agents but are prohibitively difficult to describe in advance abound in real-life. This notion has also pervaded a substantial amount of economic literature. We put forth a model of such events...

We consider a competitive insurance market with adverse selection. Unlike the standard models, we assume that individuals receive the benefit of some type of potential government assistance that guarantees them a minimum level of wealth. For example, this assistance might be some type of...

Exchange of risks is considered here as a transferable-utility cooperative game. When the concerned agents are risk averse, there is a core imputation given by means of shadow prices on state-dependent claims. Like in finance, a risk can hardly be evaluated merely by its inherent statistical...

High correlations between risks can increase required insurer capital and/or reduce the availability of insurance. For such increase lines, securitization is rapidly emerging as an alternative form of risk transfer. The ultimate success of securitization in replacing or complementing traditional...

This paper considers family formation and reciprocity-based cooperation in the form of sharing of earnings-risk. While risk sharing is one benefit to marriage it is also limited by divorce risk. With search in the marriage market there may be multiple equilibria diering not only in divorce rates...

In a perfectly competitive market for annuities with full information, the price of annuities is equal to individuals' (discounted) survival probabilities. That is, prices are actuarially fair. In contrast, the pricing implicit in social security systems invariably allows for cross subsidization...

When information on longevity (survival functions) is unknown early in life, individuals have an interest to insure themselves against future 'risk-class' classification. Accordingly, the First-Best typically involves transfers across states of nature. Competitive equilibrium cannot provide such...

This informal paper explores models of competitve insurance market equilibrium when individuals of initially similar apparent risk experience divergence in risk levels over time. The information structrue is modeled in three alternative ways: all insurers and insureds know risk at any point in...

This paper reviews three important issues in the literature on international and intranational risk sharing. First, we establish a comprehensive set of stylized facts for consumption risk sharing within and across countries. Consistent with the findings in the literature, we find that the...