This paper empirically assesses the selection effects and determinants of the demand for supplemental health insurance that covers hospital and dental benefits in Germany. Our representative dataset provides doctor-diagnosed indicators of the individual’s health status, risk attitude, demand for medical services and insurance purchases in other lines of insurance as well as rich demographic and...

We examined the association between 50 m freestyle performance (50FS) and average speed (AS), peak (PS), minimum (MS) intracyclic variation (ISV) compared curves from swimmers with different levels using functional analysis of variance (FANOVA). Fourteen male (50FS: 22.50 ± 0.58 s) performed a maximal sprint speedometer AS, PS, MS, IVV were assessed for correlational analysis. 50FS obtained in ...

Deductibles in health insurance are often regarded as a means to contain health care costs when individuals exhibit moral hazard. However, in the absence of moral hazard, voluntarily chosen deductibles may instead lead to self-selection into different insurance contracts. We use a set of new variables in the German Socioeconomic Panel for the years 2002, 2004, and 2006 that measure individual h...

In this paper we derive a market value for with-profits guaranteed annuity options (GAOs) using martingale modelling techniques. Furthermore, we show how to construct a static replicating portfolio of vanilla interest rate swaptions that replicates the with-profits GAO. Finally, we illustrate with historical UK interest rate data from the period 1980 to 2000 that the static replicating portfoli...

Abstract We study insurance against common shocks in cooperatives and other productive groups of individuals. In those groups, and due to strategic interactions among group members, insurance decisions may be preferably taken at the group level rather than the individual level. We highlight two kinds of potential problems with individual insurance: the first one is a free-riding problem because...

This paper studies how health insurance affects the rate at which individuals visit hospitals and emergency departments (EDs). We identify the causal effect of losing health insurance using a regression discontinuity design. We compare individuals just before and just after their 23rd birthdays, which private insurers have used as a cutoff after which students are no longer eligible for their p...

The present study estimates demand and supply functions of the UK market for 25-year maturity unitlinked (UL) personal pensions for the years 1998 to 2000. It exploits the unique information contained in the PIA disclosure surveys on reduction in yields and new business. The results suggest the popular view about the business of life offices “insurance products are sold, not bought” does not me...

Social Learning and Health Insurance Enrollment: Evidence from China’s New Cooperative Medical Scheme This paper examines the role of social learning in household enrollment decisions for the New Cooperative Medical Scheme in rural China by estimating a static game with incomplete information. Using a rich dataset from the China Health and Nutrition Survey, we find that the social network effec...

For variable annuities, the cost of hedging must be taken into consideration when firms use the dynamic hedging strategy. In this paper, we study hedging strategies by assuming the hedge position follows a random walk with boundary conditions. We find that re-balancing delta to the initial position is always more cost-efficient than re-balancing it to the edge for a fixed transaction cost. Howe...

This paper considers the issue of forecasting financial fragility of banks and insurances using a panel data set of performance indicators, namely distance-todefault, taking unobserved common factors into account. We show that common factors are important in the performance of banks and insurances, analyze the influences of a number of observable factors on banking and insurance performance, an...