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Keywords:insurance 

Working Paper
Insurance and Inequality with Persistent Private Information

This paper studies the implications of optimal insurance provision for long-run welfare and inequality in economies with persistent private information. We consider a model in which a principal insures an agent whose privately observed endowment follows an ergodic, finite Markov chain. The optimal contract always induces immiseration: the agent’s consumption and utility decrease without bound. Under positive serial correlation, the optimal contract also features backloaded high-powered incentives: the sensitivity of the agent’s utility with respect to his report increases without bound. ...
Working Papers , Paper 2018-020

Newsletter
Catastrophe Bonds: A Primer and Retrospective

Since 1997, the catastrophe (CAT) bond market has provided the insurance industry with protections against natural disasters that have grown more frequent and costly. This article explains how CAT bonds work, and then looks at how the market for them has grown in size, coverage, and sophistication over the past two decades. It also explores how and why different types of institutions use CAT bonds to transfer insurance risks.
Chicago Fed Letter

Report
Anxiety in the face of risk

We model an ?anxious? agent as one who is more risk averse with respect to imminent risks than with respect to distant risks. Based on a utility function that captures individual subjects? behavior in experiments, we provide a tractable theory relaxing the restriction of constant risk aversion across horizons and show that it generates rich implications. We first apply the model to insurance markets and explain the high premia for short-horizon insurance. Then, we show that costly delegated portfolio management, investment advice, and withdrawal fees emerge as endogenous features and ...
Staff Reports , Paper 610

Journal Article
A Method for Estimating the Price of Stablecoin Insurance

As crypto assets such as stablecoins have gained traction in recent years, they have also raised financial stability concerns. The attention has likely been motivated by a steady stream of stablecoin collapses, which are essentially bank runs. One approach to mitigating this risk could be to insure stablecoins in a way similar to bank deposits—that is, with a third-party guarantee to cover the depositor’s (or coin-holder’s) losses should the bank (or issuer) collapse. Because stablecoins have many functional similarities to bank deposits, the theory underlying deposit insurance pricing ...
Economic Review

Working Paper
Insurance and Inequality with Persistent Private Information

We study the implications of optimal insurance provision for long-run welfare and inequality in economies with persistent private information. A principal insures an agent whose private type follows an ergodic, finite-state Markov chain. The optimal contract always induces immiseration: the agent’s consumption and utility decrease without bound. Under positive serial correlation, it also backloads high-powered incentives: the sensitivity of the agent’s utility with respect to his reports increases without bound. These results extend—and help elucidate the limits of—the hallmark ...
Working Papers , Paper 2018-020

Working Paper
Insurance and Inequality with Persistent Private Information

This paper studies the implications of optimal insurance provision for long-run welfare and inequality in economies with persistent private information. We consider a model in which a principal insures an agent whose privately observed endowment follows an ergodic, finite Markov chain. The optimal contract always induces immiseration: the agent’s consumption and utility decrease without bound. Under positive serial correlation, the optimal contract also features backloaded high-powered incentives: the sensitivity of the agent’s utility with respect to his report increases without bound. ...
Working Papers , Paper 2018-020

Working Paper
Financial Incentives, Hospital Care, and Health Outcomes: Evidence from Fair Pricing Laws

It is often assumed that financial incentives of healthcare providers affect the care they deliver, but this issue is surprisingly difficult to study. The recent enactment of state laws that limit how much hospitals can charge uninsured patients provide a unique opportunity. Using an event study framework and panel data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, we examine whether these regulations lead to reductions in the amount and quality of care given to uninsured patients. We find that the introduction of a fair pricing law leads to a seven to nine percent reduction in the average length of ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2015-107

Journal Article
Nontraditional Insurance and Risks to Financial Stability

Do insurance companies pose a threat to financial stability? Historically, the answer has been no. But the insurance industry?s expansion into nontraditional activities has prompted reconsideration.
Economic Insights , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , Pages 18-25

Report
Unintended Consequences of "Mandatory" Flood Insurance

We document that the quasi-mandatory U.S. flood insurance program reduces mortgage lending along both the extensive and intensive margins. We measure flood insurance mandates using FEMA flood maps, focusing on the discreet updates to these maps that can be made exogenous to true underlying flood risk. Reductions in lending are most pronounced for low-income and low-FICO borrowers, implying that the effects are at least partially driven by the added financial burden of insurance. Our results are also stronger among non-local or more-distant banks, who have a diminished ability to monitor local ...
Staff Reports , Paper 1012

Journal Article
What Explains the Decline in Life Insurance Ownership?

Life insurance ownership has declined markedly over the past 30 years, continuing a trend that began as early as 1960. In 1989, 77 percent of households owned life insurance (see figure 1). By 2013, that share had fallen to 60 percent. This article analyzes factors that might have contributed to the decline in life insurance ownership from 1989 to 2013. The focus of our analysis is on two broad sources of potential change in the demand for life insurance: changes in the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the population and changes in how those same characteristics are associated ...
Economic Perspectives , Issue 8 , Pages 1-20

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