Home equity insurance policies, policies insuring homeowners against declines in the price of their homes, would bear … some resemblance both to ordinary insurance and to financial hedging vehicles. A menu of choices for the design of such … insurance company in effect serves as a retailer to homeowners of short positions in real estate futures markets or of put …

This paper investigates the rationale for government intervention in the market for terrorism insurance, focusing on … rational terrorists. Government subsidies for terror insurance can discourage self-protection and limit the inefficiencies …

State guaranty funds are quasi-governmental agencies that provide insurance to policyholders against the risk of … insurance company failure. But insurance provided by guaranty funds, like all insurance, creates moral hazard problems … insurance companies to borrow money (i.e., from policyholders). Moreover, the existence of guaranty fund insurance enables …

This paper characterizes the welfare gains from redistributive taxation and social insurance in an environment where … the private sector provides partial insurance. We analyze stylized models in which adverse selection, pre …-existing information, or imperfect optimization in private insurance markets create a role for government intervention. We derive simple …

Should choice be offered in social insurance programs? The paper presents a conceptual framework that identifies the …

. According to my calibrations, the insurance effect reduces the marginal cost of funds (MCF) for the estate tax by as much as 30 …

This paper tests restrictions implied by the canonical theory of insurance under asymmetric information using ideal … life insurance. We report several findings which are hard to reconcile with the canonical theory. First, we find a striking … find that risk is negatively correlated with the quantity of insurance purchased although the theory predicts a positive …

to some extent on the ground that it serves as social insurance against uncertainties in labor income. They assume that … private insurance is unavailable. primarily because of moral hazard, and demonstrate that some taxation is efficient because … the benefits of mitigating risk exceed incentive costs. This note suggests that private insurance should be considered …