I examine competition in the sector of mortgage life insurance, in particular the periodic switching right (PSR), by which the borrower can change his insurer once every period (say, every year). The PSR is likely to have pro competitive effects (lower premium), but by the same move, to lead to...

The age structure of the French population has been experiencing dramatic changes over the past decades and is likely to do so in a near future. The increasing proportion of elder people may modify the saving behaviour of French households. The level of saving, as well as its composition, may be...

This survey reviews the micro-economic foundations of the analysis of life insurance markets. The first part outlines a simple theory of insurance needs based on the life-cycle hypothesis. The second part builds on contract theory to expose the main issues in life insurance design within a...

The results of the study provide empirical evidence of the way ETF promoters were the driving force behind development of the market, exercising social control with relative discretion. Section 2 describes the nature of ETFs in general and the way they have evolved in France, with a focus on...

The development of market-based finance and amendments to regulation on bank powers have supported a larger involvement of US banks in financial activities over the last decades. Changes in the structure of income question risks though. Especially, with a performance perspective: does...

The standard literature on the value of life relies on Yaari’s (1965) model, which includes an implicit assumption of risk neutrality with respect to life duration. To overpass this limitation, we extend the theory to a simple variety of nonadditively separable preferences. The enlargement we...

Le régime de l’assurance des catastrophes naturelles en France est actuellement en équilibre. Cependant, un évènement majeur peut le déséquilibrer et l’Etat peut être appelé en garantie. Des événements climatiques récents ont conduit à l’élaboration d’une réforme,...

This article models a situation in which a monopolistic insurer evaluates risk better than its customers. The resulting equilibrium allocations are compared to the consequences of the standard adverse selection hypothesis. On the positive side, they exhibit the property that low-risk people are...

This paper analyses the qualitative properties of optimal contracts when agents have multiple priors and are uncertainty averse in an infinite state space framework. The case of the epsilon-contamination of a given prior, a basic tool in robustness theory is fully developped. It is shown that if...

This article examines the impact of varying mandatory pensions on saving, life insurance, and annuity markets in an adverse selection economy. Under reasonable restrictions, we find unambiguous effects on market size, participation rates, and equilibrium prices. The degree of adverse selection,...