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on Insurance Economics |
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Issue of 2012‒04‒23
four papers chosen by Soumitra K Mallick Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management |
| By: | Shunya Sugawara (Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo); Yasuhiro Omori (Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo) |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a simple econometric framework that can identify moral hazard and selection problems separately in insurance markets. Although our methodology requires behavioral assumptions on the consumer's optimization, we show that these assumptions are necessary for the separate identification of the two sources of information asymmetry. Our method is applied to the dental insurance market in the United States. In addition to standard moral hazard, we find advantageous selection, which is not detected by a conventional methodology. |
| Date: | 2012–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:fseres:2012cf849&r=ias |
| By: | Masayoshi Hayashi (Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo) |
| Abstract: | There are more than 1,700 municipalities serving as insurers in Japan's system of National Health Insurance (NHI). The NHI has several institutional routes to buffer local premiums from abrupt changes in regional health demands that destabilize the NHI benefit expenditures. After briefly introducing the system of public health care in Japan, this study elaborates on the methods for quantifying the degree of stabilization of local public health care expenditures by critically evaluating the methods that have been utilized in the related literature and proposes a modified method appropriate for this study. It then quantifies the channels and degrees of stabilization using municipal NHI data in the 2000s. </table> |
| Date: | 2012–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tky:fseres:2012cf847&r=ias |
| By: | Markussen, Simen (Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research); Røed, Knut (Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | Based on administrative panel data from Norway, we examine how social insurance dependency spreads within neighborhoods, families, ethnic minorities, and among former schoolmates. We use a fixed effects methodology that accounts for endogenous group formation, contextual interactions, and time-constant as well as time-varying confounders. We report evidence that social insurance dependency is contagious. The estimated network effects are both quantitatively and statistically significant, and they rise rapidly with "relational closeness" in a way that establishes endogenous social interaction as a central causal mechanism. Social interactions do not cross ethnic borders. |
| Keywords: | social interaction, social multiplier, work norms, peer effects |
| JEL: | C31 H55 I38 |
| Date: | 2012–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6446&r=ias |
| By: | Emla Fitzsimons (Institute for Fiscal Studies); Alice Mesnard (Institute for Fiscal Studies) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates how the permanent departure of the father from the household affects children's school enrolment and work participation in rural Colombia. Our results show that departure of the father decreases children's school enrolment by around 4 percentage points, and increases child labour by 3 percentage points. After using household fixed effects to deal with time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity, and providing evidence suggesting strongly that estimates are not biased by time varying unobserved heterogeneity, we also exploit an interesting feature of our setting, a conditional cash transfer programme in place, and show that it counteracts the adverse effects. This, and other pieces of evidence we give, strongly suggests that the channel through which departure affects children is through reducing income. It also highlights the important safety net role played by such welfare programmes, in particular for very disadvantaged households, who are unlikely to find formal or informal ways of insuring themselves against such vagaries. |
| Keywords: | Child labour; Schooling; Permanent departure; Income loss; Credit and insurance market failures; Conditional cash transfer; Safety net. |
| JEL: | I20 J12 J22 O16 |
| Date: | 2012–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ifs:ifsewp:12/04&r=ias |