Since the seminal work by Rothschild and Stiglitz on competitive insurance markets under adverse selection the problem of non-existence of equilibrium hat puzzled many economists. In this paper we approach this problem from an evolutionary point of view. In a dynamic model insurance companies remove lossmaking contracts from the market and copy profit making ones. Occasionally, they also experiment, adding new contracts or removing current ones arbitrarily. We show that the Rothschild-Stiglitz outcome arises in the long run if it cinstitutes an equilibrium in the static framework, but also if it is not an equilibrium, provides that firms only experiment with contracts in the vicinity of their current portfolio.
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Paper provided by Washington St. Louis - School of Business and Political Economy in its series Papers with number
9808.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General