This paper empirically assesses the selection effects and determinants of the demand for supple-mental 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...

We estimate the impact of a differential treatment of paid employees versus self-employed workers in a public health insurance system on the entry rate into entrepreneurship. In Germany, the public health insurance system is mandatory for most paid employees, but not for the self-employed, who...

In the backdrop of the low level of health insurance coverage in India, this study examines the determinants of the scaling-up process of health insurance by analyzing the rational behaviour of an insurance agent facing a trade-off between selling ‘health insurance’ and ‘other forms of...

This paper analyses the relationship between locus of control (LOC) and the demand for supplementary health insurance. Drawing on longitudinal data from Germany, we find robust evidence that individuals having an internal LOC are more likely to take up supplementary private health insurance...

To equalize differences in health plan premiums due to differences in risk pools, the German legislature introduced a simple Risk Adjustment Scheme (RAS) based on age, gender and disability status in 1994. In addition, effective 1996, consumers gained the freedom to choose among hundreds of...

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...

In Germany, private health insurance covers more innovative and costly treatments than public insurance. Moreover, privately insured individuals are treated preferentially by doctors. In this article, I use subjective health data to examine whether these superior features of private insurance...