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 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...

We examine the effects of ex post revelation of information about the risk type or the risk-reducing behavior of insureds in automobile insurance markets both for perfect competition and for monopoly. Specifically, we assume that insurers can offer a contract with information revelation ex post,...

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...

Contract-relevant information asymmetries are known to cause inefficien-cies in markets. The information asymmetry is largest in the beginning of the customer-insurer relationship but reduces over time; the longer a poli-cyholder stays with the insurer the more the insurer learns about the...

We build a model of competitive pooling, which incorporates adverse selection and signalling into general equilibrium. Pools are characterized by their quantity limits on contributions. Households signal their reliability by choosing which pool to join. In equilibrium, pools with lower quantity...

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...

Does asymmetric information matter in insurance markets? Recent evidence on the automobile insurance market suggests not, rejecting the separating equilibnum of the Rothschild-Stiglitz model. However, I show that a two-penod version of that model can sustain a pooling equilibrium with experience...

Dubey and Geanakoplos [2002] have developed a theory of competitive pooling, which incorporates adverse selection and signaling into general equilibrium. By recasting the Rothschild-Stiglitz model of insurance in this framework, they find that a separating equilibrium always exists and is...

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...