Heterogeneity, Demand for Insurance, and Adverse Selection

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Spinnewijn, Johannes
• 署名单位: University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20140254
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 308-343
• 关键词: Risk preferences; asymmetric information; plan choice; health-insurance; welfare; MARKETS; uncertainty; overconfidence; perceptions; ECONOMICS

摘要

Recent evidence underlines the importance of demand frictions distorting insurance choices. Heterogeneous frictions cause the willingness to pay for insurance to be biased upward (relative to value) for those purchasing insurance, but downward for those who remain uninsured. The paper integrates this finding with standard methods for evaluating welfare in insurance markets and demonstrates how welfare conclusions regarding adversely selected markets are affected. The demand frictions framework also makes qualitatively different predictions about the desirability of policies, such as insurance subsidies and mandates, commonly used to tackle adverse selection. (JEL D11, D81, D82, G22, G28)