This paper uses medical care costs of joiners in their first year and of leavers in their last year prior the move, relative to the age–sex groups’ means, to examine the mechanisms behind the switching decisions. Since under the Israeli National Health Insurance Scheme no premiums are paid...

The paper analyzes the risk disclosure quality in the prospectus of IPOs in Germany between 2006 and 2008. Quality of risk information is measured as precision and comprehensibility. The relationship between risk disclosure quality and earnings power is tested.

Angesichts sich wiederholender Hochwasserereignisse in Deutschland wird immer wieder die Einführung einer Pflichtversicherung gegen Elementarschäden gefordert. Der Beitrag untersucht gängige Argumente für die Einführung einer solchen Versicherung. Im Ergebnis plädieren die Autoren für...

This paper characterizes the optimal redistributive taxation when individuals are heterogeneous in two exogenous dimensions: their skills and their values of non-market activities. Search-matching frictions on the labor markets create unemployment. Wages, labor demand and participation are...

The paper studies the impact of government budget constraint in a pure adverse selection problem of monopoly regulation. The government maximizes total surplus but incurs some cost of public funds. An alternative to regulation is proposed in which firms are free to enter the market and to choose...

This paper investigates the effect of adverse selection and price competition on the private annuity market in a model with two retirement periods. In this framework annuity companies can offer contracts with different payoffs over the periods of retirement. Varying the time structure of the...

This paper investigates the effect of adverse selection on the private annuity market in a model with two periods of retirement. In order to introduce the existence of limited-time pension insurance, we assume that for each period of retirement separate contracts can be purchased. Demand for the...

The market for private life annuities is characterised by adverse selection, that is, contracts offer lower than fair payoffs to individuals with low life expectancy. Moreover, life expectancy and income have been found to be positively correlated. The paper shows that a linear tax on annuity...

Enhancing the efficiency of education and health spending is a key policy challenge in G7 countries. The paper assesses this efficiency and seeks to establish a link between differences in efficiency across countries and policy and institutional factors. The findings suggest that reforms aimed...

It has long been standard in agency theory to search for incentive-compatible mechanisms on the assumption that people care only about their own material wealth. However, this assumption is clearly refuted by numerous experiments, and we feel that it may be useful to consider nonpecuniary...