In a two-period model with uncertainty about life expectancy, we analyze several measures that are typically included in a social security reform: tax incentives for private life annuities, a cut in the social security benefits, and an increase in the social security tax. First, we look at the...

This paper analyzes equilibrium health insurance premium dependencies on signaling costs given individual health states, risk types, and risk type attributes. Since precise determination of an individual's premium is costly, insurers can categorize insureds based on relative screening costs. We...

This brief is actually going to have two levels. One level will go with the advertised title, and I’ll tell you my current views on the truth about moral hazard and adverse selection. Adverse selection will serve as somewhat of a handmaid of moral hazard, as you will see. That’s one level....

This paper uses a unique panel data set of an insurer's transactions with repeat customers. Consistent with the asymmetric learning hypothesis that repeated contracting enables sellers to obtain an informational advantage over their rivals, I find that the insurer makes higher profits in...

There is a general presumption that competition is a good thing. In this paper we show that competition in the insurance markets can be bad and that adverse selection is in general worse under competition than under monopoly. The reason is that monopoly can exploit its market power to relax...

Adverse selection, which is well described in the theoretical literature on insurance, remains relatively difficult to study empirically. The traditional approach, which focuses on the binary decision of “covered” or “not”, potentially misses the main effects because heterogeneity may be...

We describe recent advances in the empirical analysis of insurance markets. This new research proposes ways to estimate individual demand for insurance and the relationship between prices and insurer costs in the presence of adverse and advantageous selection. We discuss how these models permit...

We document a large and persistent anomaly in the UK car insurance market over the period 2012-13: insurance companies charged a higher premium for third-party (liability) insurance than comprehensive insurance (which includes third-party). Furthermore, some companies charged higher prices for...

Risk adjustment is used in settings with uncertainty to make payments or allow comparisons of outcomes while controlling for exogenous risk factors that explain variations in the outcome of interest, such as spending, utilisation, quality or death. This article focuses on the conceptual and...

The present paper thoroughly explores second-best efficient allocations in an insurance economy with adverse selection. We start with a natural extension of the classical model, assuming less than perfect risk perception. We characterize the constraints on efficient redistribution, and we...