This paper uses data from a natural experiment to investigate the potential incentive effect of a fixed unemployment insurance period. We compare two large groups of Norwegian unemployed persons who registered as unemployed in 1990 and 1991. The last group was affected by a rule change that in...

This note deals with on-line computatin of learning of Pareto optimal insurance contracts. We account for the fact that the loss distribution often is unknown, unavailable, or intractable. Alternatively, the contracting parties could be inexperienced. In both cases losses must be simulated of...

Owners of stochastic assets can pool their endowments to smoothen and insure individual payoffs across outcomes and time. We explore, in such a setting, how contingent shadow prices on aggregate resources can be used for three purposes: first, to design mutual contracts for risk averse agents;...