What are the welfare effects of a policy that facilitates for insurance customers to privately and covertly learn about their accident risks? We endogenize the information structure in Stiglitz's classic monopoly insurance model. We first show that his results are robust: For a small information...

This paper develops a framework for the analysis of how asymmetric information impacts on adverse selection and market efficiency.  We adopt Akerlof's (1970) unit-demand model extended to a setting with multidimensional public and private information.  Adverse selection and efficiency are...

This paper uses a unique panel data set of an insurer's transactions with repeat customers. Consistent with the asymmetric learning hypothesis that repeated contracting enables sellers to obtain an informational advantage over their rivals, I find that the insurer makes higher profits in...

This paper investigates the effect of real assets as collateral on the economy. I show how credit rationing is mitigated by the exsistence of bad firms whether it is linked to the value of distressed assets. Indeed, when loans are collateralized and firms are credit constrained, the amount...

The implementation of nature conservation policy in the EU is often based on contracts between public authorities and landowners. We model these contracts in the presence of adverse selection and moral hazard when the outcome is uncertain. The results show that agents, who have high probability...

We describe recent advances in the empirical analysis of insurance markets. This new research proposes ways to estimate individual demand for insurance and the relationship between prices and insurer costs in the presence of adverse and advantageous selection. We discuss how these models permit...

This paper provides a theoretical model to analyse public funding of family elderly care when two severity type are present (the high and the low), under asymmetry of information and increasing costs. The social planner can redistribute between households, but because of incomplete information...

Risk classification refers to the use of observable characteristics by insurers to group individuals with similar expected claims, compute the corresponding premiums, and thereby reduce asymmetric information. With perfect risk classification, premiums fully reflect the expected cost associated...

This paper empirically investigates the effect of policyholders’ private information about risky traffic behavior on automobile insurance coverage and ex post risk. It combines insurance company information with the policyholders’ private information on risky traffic behavior (traffic...

Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976) show that there need not exist a competitive equilibrium in markets with adverse selection. Building on their framework we demonstrate that externalities between agents − an agent's utility upon accepting a contract depends on the average type attracted by the...