If rational individuals pay the full costs of their decisions about food intake and exercise, economists, policy makers, and public health officials should treat the obesity epidemic as a matter of indifference. In this paper, we show that, as long as insurance premiums are not risk rated for obesity, health insurance coverage systematically shields those covered from the full costs of physical...

The global insurance industry provides investment and supportive insurance services such as: motor/vehicle, fire, home, personal accident, product liability, public liability and professional indemnity. These services are very beneficial to private individuals and companies and critically depend on the actual factors and risks involved in the insurance policy. There are risks involved in taking...

This paper examines how relationship capital drives competition among underwriting banks in the corporate bond underwriting market. The recent deregulation and subsequent re-entry by commercial banks into this market in the U.S. raises policy interest in measuring competitive e ect of the deregulation. The theories of relationship and reputation imply that (1) the entrants' products are di eren...

In 2009, healthcare costs in the United States totaled $2.5 trillion dollars and constituted more than 17% of GDP. 1 , 2 Healthcare inflation has trended higher than general CPI for more than twenty years and this pattern is expected to escalate. The U.S. currently has the most expensive healthcare system in the world both in terms of absolute dollars and per capita spending. The underwriting f...

This chapter provides a detailed discussion of the evidence on housing and mortgage lending, as well as the potential impacts of such discrimination on minority outcomes like homeownership and neighborhood environment. The paper begins by discussing conceptual issues surrounding empirical analyses of discrimination including explanations for why discrimination takes place, defining different fo...

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A great deal of the present concern regarding future use of genetic tests by insurers stems from a lack of knowledge of the basic tenets of private, voluntary insurance. For this reason, I would like to examine briefly some of the fundamental principles of insurance before directly addressing issues associated with genetic testing. Insurance is intended to provide financial protection against u...