I revisit the question of which motive underlies insurance demand. I draw on the literature of state-dependent utility and on the literature of imperfectly divisible consumption to argue that the general purpose of insurance is not a risk transfer, but meeting a conditional need. In this way,...

We study a commons problem under uncertainty, where individual actions affect the risk of a future damage event. We show that for risk-averse agents, an extra risk on the amount of the damage induces more precautionary actions in Nash equilibrium. Similarly, for prudent agents an extra risk in...