This paper analyzes how insurance companies allow the issue of market incompleteness to be overcome. A general equilibrium economy is considered in which heterogeneous agents face endowment risks. Markets are incomplete: there are only markets for trading commodities ex-post and hedging price...

The classic Arrow-Debreu framework requires a very large number of specific securities to reach Pareto optimality. The present paper shows that financial intermediation can play an important role in maintaining a more parsimonious market framework while still obtaining Pareto optimality. In the...

Prevention and insurance are studied in an urban model with spatial heterogeneity due not only to commuting transport costs but also to natural disaster risks. Costly insurance and charity donation both lead to low insurance purchase. While the former leads to high prevention, the latter leads...