This paper demonstrates the existence of adverse selection in the group insurance market with no individual choice. We provide evidence against the “conventional wisdom” that group insurance mitigates adverse selection because of the mixture of high risks and low risks. We show, however,...

In the context of insurance industry, we provide a theoretical and empirical framework to analyze the tradeoffs between three fundamental goals of business: growth, profitability, and safety. Insurers balance on premium and underwriting standards to optimize one goal constrained by the other...

We develop a dynamic game model for efficient catastrophe risk-sharing that allows decision makers to derive optimal pricing, capital, and buying decisions in one equilibrium. Existing catastrophe insurance models focus on either the primary insurance market or the reinsurance market, thus...

A large empirical literature found that the correlation between insurance purchase and ex post realization of risk is often statistically insignificant or negative. This is inconsistent with the predictions from the classic models of insurance a la Akerlof (1970), Pauly (1974) and Rothschild and...

A large empirical literature found that the correlation between insurance purchase and ex post realization of risk is often statistically insignificant or negative. This is inconsistent with the predictions from the classic models of insurance a la Akerlof (1970), Pauly (1974) and Rothschild and...

This paper develops a novel technique that allows us to characterize the optimal biased generalized lottery contest. In our baseline setting, we search for the optimal multiplicative biases for asymmetric Tullock contests — i.e., the weights placed on contestants' effort entries in the contest...