Public Self-Insurance and the Samaritan’s Dilemma in a Federation Tim Lohse and Julio R. Robledo* Motivated by recent disasters, this paper analyzes the risk sharing aspect in a federation. The regions can be hit by a shock leading to losses that occur with an exogenous probability and in a stochastically independent way. The regions can spend effort on selfinsurance to reduce the size of the l...

This paper studies the impact of reputation/feedback systems on the operation of online credit markets using data from Prosper.com. The ability of lenders to recover their loans is one of the main concerns in these markets, where the problems of asymmetric information are two-fold. On the one hand, borrowers differ in their inherent risks; on the other hand, additional incentives are necessary ...

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...

Quasi‐linearity of preferences is one of the standard assumptions in auction theory. This assumption is of particular significance in multi‐attribute reverse auctions which are used in procurement. This paper presents an analysis of this assumption and its implications. Building on observations of scholars in economics and decision sciences who note that in practice such preferences may be rare...

This paper characterizes the welfare efficiency of the Cournot equilibrium and provides bounds for the loss in consumer surplus, producer surplus and welfare when the number of firms in the market changes. I only assume that demand is decreasing in price and costs increasing in the quantity produced as long as Cournot equilibrium exists. I show how price, demand and average cost, before and aft...

The objective of this study was to assess the relationship between the animal welfare conditions evaluated through the supply chain and pork quality variation. A total of 4,680 pigs from 12 farms-5 animal welfare improved raising system (AWIRS) and 7 conventional raising system (CON) farms-were assessed from farm to slaughter through a comprehensive audit protocol merging the European Welfare Q...

The paper tries to estimate the welfare loss due to early revelation of relevant information about individual risk (the ’Hirschleifer effect’) in the case of predictive medicine. Using CRRA preferences with the range of ∗I received useful comments from Georges Dionne, an anonymous referee and the workshop participants. Errors are mine. Financial support from the NSF (Grant No. 0096516) is grate...