IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2010.07383.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Insurance under Maxmin Expected Utility

Author

Listed:
  • Corina Birghila
  • Tim J. Boonen
  • Mario Ghossoub

Abstract

We examine a problem of demand for insurance indemnification, when the insured is sensitive to ambiguity and behaves according to the Maxmin-Expected Utility model of Gilboa and Schmeidler (1989), whereas the insurer is a (risk-averse or risk-neutral) Expected-Utility maximizer. We characterize optimal indemnity functions both with and without the customary ex ante no-sabotage requirement on feasible indemnities, and for both concave and linear utility functions for the two agents. This allows us to provide a unifying framework in which we examine the effects of the no-sabotage condition, marginal utility of wealth, belief heterogeneity, as well as ambiguity (multiplicity of priors) on the structure of optimal indemnity functions. In particular, we show how the singularity in beliefs leads to an optimal indemnity function that involves full insurance on an event to which the insurer assigns zero probability, while the decision maker assigns a positive probability. We examine several illustrative examples, and we provide numerical studies for the case of a Wasserstein and a Renyi ambiguity set.

Suggested Citation

  • Corina Birghila & Tim J. Boonen & Mario Ghossoub, 2020. "Optimal Insurance under Maxmin Expected Utility," Papers 2010.07383, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2010.07383
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2010.07383
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ghossoub, Mario, 2019. "Optimal insurance under rank-dependent expected utility," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 51-66.
    2. Alain Chateauneuf & Fabio Maccheroni & Massimo Marinacci & Jean-Marc Tallon, 2005. "Monotone continuous multiple priors," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 26(4), pages 973-982, November.
    3. Peter Klibanoff & Massimo Marinacci & Sujoy Mukerji, 2005. "A Smooth Model of Decision Making under Ambiguity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(6), pages 1849-1892, November.
    4. MOSSIN, Jan, 1968. "Aspects of rational insurance purchasing," LIDAM Reprints CORE 23, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    5. Morris, Stephen, 1995. "The Common Prior Assumption in Economic Theory," Economics and Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 227-253, October.
    6. Georges Dionne (ed.), 2013. "Handbook of Insurance," Springer Books, Springer, edition 2, number 978-1-4614-0155-1, September.
    7. Meglena Jeleva & Bertrand Villeneuve, 2004. "Insurance contracts with imprecise probabilities and adverse selection," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 23(4), pages 777-794, May.
    8. Gur Huberman & David Mayers & Clifford W. Smith Jr., 1983. "Optimal Insurance Policy Indemnity Schedules," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 415-426, Autumn.
    9. Yaari, Menahem E, 1987. "The Dual Theory of Choice under Risk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(1), pages 95-115, January.
    10. Dimitris Bertsimas & Melvyn Sim, 2004. "The Price of Robustness," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 52(1), pages 35-53, February.
    11. Amy Finkelstein & James Poterba, 2004. "Adverse Selection in Insurance Markets: Policyholder Evidence from the U.K. Annuity Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(1), pages 183-208, February.
    12. J. David Cummins & Olivier Mahul, 2004. "The demand for insurance with an upper limit on coverage," Post-Print hal-01952122, HAL.
    13. Meglena Jeleva, 2000. "Background Risk, Demand for Insurance, and Choquet Expected Utility Preferences," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 25(1), pages 7-28, June.
    14. Asimit, Alexandru V. & Bignozzi, Valeria & Cheung, Ka Chun & Hu, Junlei & Kim, Eun-Seok, 2017. "Robust and Pareto optimality of insurance contracts," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 262(2), pages 720-732.
    15. Birghila, Corina & Pflug, Georg Ch., 2019. "Optimal XL-insurance under Wasserstein-type ambiguity," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 30-43.
    16. Guillaume Carlier & Rose-Anne Dana, 2003. "Pareto efficient insurance contracts when the insurer's cost function is discontinuous," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 21(4), pages 871-893, June.
    17. Christian Gollier, 2014. "Optimal insurance design of ambiguous risks," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 57(3), pages 555-576, November.
    18. J. David Cummins & Olivier Mahul, 2004. "The Demand for Insurance With an Upper Limit on Coverage," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 71(2), pages 253-264, June.
    19. Chi, Yichun, 2019. "On The Optimality Of A Straight Deductible Under Belief Heterogeneity," ASTIN Bulletin, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(1), pages 243-262, January.
    20. Ch. Pflug, Georg & Timonina-Farkas, Anna & Hochrainer-Stigler, Stefan, 2017. "Incorporating model uncertainty into optimal insurance contract design," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 68-74.
    21. Amarante, Massimiliano & Ghossoub, Mario & Phelps, Edmund, 2015. "Ambiguity on the insurer’s side: The demand for insurance," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 61-78.
    22. Dana, Rose-Anne & Scarsini, Marco, 2007. "Optimal risk sharing with background risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 152-176, March.
    23. Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Subjective Probability and Expected Utility without Additivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(3), pages 571-587, May.
    24. Pierre-Andre Chiappori & Bernard Salanie, 2000. "Testing for Asymmetric Information in Insurance Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(1), pages 56-78, February.
    25. Carole Bernard & Xuedong He & Jia-An Yan & Xun Yu Zhou, 2015. "Optimal Insurance Design Under Rank-Dependent Expected Utility," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 154-186, January.
    26. Furman, Edward & Zitikis, Ricardas, 2008. "Weighted premium calculation principles," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 459-465, February.
    27. Erick Delage & Yinyu Ye, 2010. "Distributionally Robust Optimization Under Moment Uncertainty with Application to Data-Driven Problems," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 58(3), pages 595-612, June.
    28. David Alary & Christian Gollier & Nicolas Treich, 2013. "The Effect of Ambiguity Aversion on Insurance and Self‐protection," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 123(12), pages 1188-1202, December.
    29. Steffen Rebennack & Josef Kallrath, 2015. "Continuous Piecewise Linear Delta-Approximations for Univariate Functions: Computing Minimal Breakpoint Systems," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 167(2), pages 617-643, November.
    30. Hogarth, Robin M & Kunreuther, Howard, 1989. "Risk, Ambiguity, and Insurance," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 5-35, April.
    31. Ghossoub, Mario, 2019. "Budget-constrained optimal insurance with belief heterogeneity," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 79-91.
    32. Quiggin, John, 1982. "A theory of anticipated utility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 323-343, December.
    33. David Wozabal, 2012. "A framework for optimization under ambiguity," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 193(1), pages 21-47, March.
    34. Ghossoub, Mario, 2019. "Budget-constrained optimal insurance without the nonnegativity constraint on indemnities," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 22-39.
    35. Robert J. Aumann, 1998. "Common Priors: A Reply to Gul," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(4), pages 929-938, July.
    36. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    37. Ghirardato, Paolo & Maccheroni, Fabio & Marinacci, Massimo, 2004. "Differentiating ambiguity and ambiguity attitude," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 118(2), pages 133-173, October.
    38. Ngueveu, Sandra Ulrich, 2019. "Piecewise linear bounding of univariate nonlinear functions and resulting mixed integer linear programming-based solution methods," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 275(3), pages 1058-1071.
    39. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5358 is not listed on IDEAS
    40. Thomas Breuer & Imre Csiszár, 2016. "Measuring Distribution Model Risk," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(2), pages 395-411, April.
    41. Amarante, Massimiliano, 2009. "Foundations of neo-Bayesian statistics," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(5), pages 2146-2173, September.
    42. Faruk Gul, 1998. "A Comment on Aumann's Bayesian View," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(4), pages 923-928, July.
    43. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5394 is not listed on IDEAS
    44. Raviv, Artur, 1979. "The Design of an Optimal Insurance Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(1), pages 84-96, March.
    45. Charalambos D. Aliprantis & Kim C. Border, 2006. "Infinite Dimensional Analysis," Springer Books, Springer, edition 0, number 978-3-540-29587-7, September.
    46. Edward Furman & Ričardas Zitikis, 2009. "Weighted Pricing Functionals With Applications to Insurance," North American Actuarial Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(4), pages 483-496.
    47. G. C. Calafiore & L. El Ghaoui, 2006. "On Distributionally Robust Chance-Constrained Linear Programs," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 130(1), pages 1-22, July.
    48. Boonen, Tim J. & Ghossoub, Mario, 2019. "On the existence of a representative reinsurer under heterogeneous beliefs," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 209-225.
    49. Furman, Edward & Zitikis, Ricardas, 2008. "Weighted risk capital allocations," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 263-269, October.
    50. Daniel Ellsberg, 1961. "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 75(4), pages 643-669.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Boonen, Tim J. & Jiang, Wenjun, 2022. "A marginal indemnity function approach to optimal reinsurance under the Vajda condition," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 303(2), pages 928-944.
    2. Sun, Huan & Wang, Haiyan & Steffensen, Sonja, 2022. "Mechanism design of multi-strategy health insurance plans under asymmetric information," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    3. Ghossoub, Mario & Jiang, Wenjun & Ren, Jiandong, 2022. "Pareto-optimal reinsurance under individual risk constraints," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 307-325.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Corina Birghila & Tim J. Boonen & Mario Ghossoub, 2023. "Optimal insurance under maxmin expected utility," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 467-501, April.
    2. Ghossoub, Mario, 2019. "Optimal insurance under rank-dependent expected utility," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 51-66.
    3. Chi, Yichun & Zhuang, Sheng Chao, 2020. "Optimal insurance with belief heterogeneity and incentive compatibility," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 104-114.
    4. Massimiliano Amarante & Mario Ghossoub, 2016. "Optimal Insurance for a Minimal Expected Retention: The Case of an Ambiguity-Seeking Insurer," Risks, MDPI, vol. 4(1), pages 1-27, March.
    5. Amarante, Massimiliano & Ghossoub, Mario & Phelps, Edmund, 2015. "Ambiguity on the insurer’s side: The demand for insurance," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 61-78.
    6. Lu, Zhiyi & Meng, Shengwang & Liu, Leping & Han, Ziqi, 2018. "Optimal insurance design under background risk with dependence," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 15-28.
    7. Birghila, Corina & Pflug, Georg Ch., 2019. "Optimal XL-insurance under Wasserstein-type ambiguity," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 30-43.
    8. Peter, Richard & Ying, Jie, 2020. "Do you trust your insurer? Ambiguity about contract nonperformance and optimal insurance demand," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 938-954.
    9. Mingli Zheng & Chong Wang & Chaozheng Li, 2016. "Insurance Contracts with Adverse Selection When the Insurer Has Ambiguity about the Composition of the Consumers," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 17(1), pages 179-206, May.
    10. Andrew J. Keith & Darryl K. Ahner, 2021. "A survey of decision making and optimization under uncertainty," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 300(2), pages 319-353, May.
    11. Asimit, Alexandru V. & Cheung, Ka Chun & Chong, Wing Fung & Hu, Junlei, 2020. "Pareto-optimal insurance contracts with premium budget and minimum charge constraints," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 17-27.
    12. Yichun Chi & Xun Yu Zhou & Sheng Chao Zhuang, 2020. "Variance Contracts," Papers 2008.07103, arXiv.org.
    13. Ghossoub, Mario, 2010. "Belief heterogeneity in the Arrow-Borch-Raviv insurance model," MPRA Paper 37630, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 22 Mar 2012.
    14. Ghossoub, Mario, 2011. "Monotone equimeasurable rearrangements with non-additive probabilities," MPRA Paper 37629, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Mar 2012.
    15. Zimper, Alexander, 2009. "Half empty, half full and why we can agree to disagree forever," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 283-299, August.
    16. Mario Ghossoub, 2016. "Optimal Insurance with Heterogeneous Beliefs and Disagreement about Zero-Probability Events," Risks, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-28, August.
    17. Boonen, Tim J. & Ghossoub, Mario, 2021. "Optimal reinsurance with multiple reinsurers: Distortion risk measures, distortion premium principles, and heterogeneous beliefs," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(PA), pages 23-37.
    18. Karni, Edi & Maccheroni, Fabio & Marinacci, Massimo, 2015. "Ambiguity and Nonexpected Utility," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    19. Treich, Nicolas, 2010. "The value of a statistical life under ambiguity aversion," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 15-26, January.
    20. Ellis, Andrew, 2018. "On dynamic consistency in ambiguous games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 241-249.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2010.07383. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.