Some insurance markets are characterized by “advantageous selection,” that is, ex-post risk and coverage are negatively correlated. We show that expectation-based loss aversion as in K'oszegi and Rabin (2006, 2007) provides a natural explanation for this phenomenon when agents face modest...

From David Ricardo making a fortune buying British government bonds on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo to Warren Buffett selling insurance to the California earthquake authority, the wisest investors have earned extraordinary returns by investing in the unknown and the unknowable (UU). But...