We study the existence of self-selection and moral hazard in the Chilean health insurance industry. Dependent workers must purchase health insurance either from one public or several private insurance providers. For them, we analyze the relationship between health care services utilization and the choice of either private or public insurance. In the case of independent workers, where there is n...

BACKGROUND Existence or non-existence of adverse selection in insurance market is one of the important cases that have always been considered by insurers. Adverse selection is one of the consequences of asymmetric information. Theory of adverse selection states that high-risk individuals demand the insurance service more than low risk individuals do. METHODS The presence of adverse selection ...

Many experts encourage homeowners to improve their houses to better survive natural catastrophes and reduce overall societal costs. However, we find these encouragements are not necessarily financially sound for the homeowner at risk of hurricane wind damage. We find that subsidized insurance reduces the incentive for a risk-neutral homeowner to purchase structural mitigation, as mitigation doe...

This article is based on two recent reports by the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) that illuminate the reasons why individuals purchase private long-term care insurance in both the group and individual markets. This information suggests that a younger and more diverse group of individuals are becoming increasingly interested in private long-term care insurance and that workplace educat...

Employers have many financial, liability and human resource reasons for providing employees purchase substance abuse treatment programs. However, using medical insurance to facilitate the purchase of this service does not make sense. This column explains why insurance is not the best vehicle for providing treatment for chemical dependency and how the purchasing of such a service can be better m...

In this paper, we develop and estimate models of the determinants of firms’ demand for directors’ and officers’ liability insurance. We add to and validate the existing empirical literature by testing hypotheses regarding the relationship between D&O insurance purchase and firm size, governance characteristics and business risk. Our data set allows us to test both purchase decisions and limits ...

The objective of this paper is to find how health insurance influences the use of health care services by the elderly. On the basis of the first wave of the Asset and Health Dynamics Survey, we find that those who are the most heavily insured use the most health care services. Because our data show little relationship between observable health measures and either the propensity to hold or to pu...

The purpose of this research is to discuss Japanese financial instability and both private life insurance and public life insurance (Kampo) demand. At the same time, we also consider Kampo’s main role and what Kampo should be as an insurance service provider in the future. From empirically estimating private life insurance and Kampo demand functions using household-level data provided by the Po...

According to data from the May 1988 Current Population Survey, 18 percent of workers are in firms that do not offer health insurance. The question explored here is whether the absence of insurance in these firms is related to lack of supply (that is, a failure of the firm to offer the benefit because the price it faces is too high or the benefit too low) or lack of demand (that is, employees in...

An important issue with promoting formal insurance in the rural areas of developing countries that has been previously ignored is the interaction between formal insurance and preexisting informal risk sharing arrangements. This paper shows in theory that formal insurance will crowd out informal transfers even when individuals do not purchase insurance, which often makes the overall welfare impa...