least insured. We document this risk-insurance pattern in data on life-insurance drawn from the Survey of Consumer Finance …. A calibrated version of the model can quantitatively account for the life-cycle variation of insurance observed in the … US data and implies welfare costs of under-insurance for young households that are equivalent to a 4 percent reduction in …

. Variable annuities are considered insurance products under the tax law, so buyers are not taxed on their investment returns …

. Variable annuities are considered insurance products under the tax law, so buyers are not taxed on their investment returns …

manage systematic mortality risks, namely self-insurance and risk transfer to purchasers of the annuity products. We … demonstrate that self-insurance leads to high loadings, so that households offered a choice would favor the risk transfer scheme …

Life insurance is a large yet poorly understood industry. A final death benefit is not paid for a majority of policies … are inverted relative to the dynamic pattern consistent with reclassification risk insurance. As an industry, insurers … for their need for future liquidity when purchasing insurance, offers a simple and unified explanation …

average markup was as low as –19 percent for annuities and –57 percent for life insurance. This extraordinary pricing behavior … insurers to record far less than a dollar of reserve per dollar of future insurance liability. We identify the shadow cost of …

reinsurers, which are less regulated and unrated off-balance-sheet entities within the same insurance group. U.S. life insurance … using shadow insurance, which capture half of the market share, ceded 25 cents of every dollar insured to shadow reinsurers … in 2012, up from 2 cents in 2002. By relaxing capital requirements, shadow insurance could reduce the marginal cost of …

This paper develops a model of the production of life insurance services. The focus is on price setting ability and the … policies and the number of insurance lines. The model is applied to Canadian life insurance firms. Price-cost margins average …

This paper examines whether middle age American households purchase adequate amounts of life insurance. The analysis is … insured is 24 percent. These findings on inadequate life insurance are even more striking if one focuses on those households …, and 31 percent if one assumes annuities are unavailable. The problem of inadequate insurance is even more significant …