This paper analyzes dynamic equilibrium risk sharing contracts between profit-maximizing intermediaries and a large pool of ex-ante identical agents that face idiosyncratic income uncertainty that makes them heterogeneous ex-post. In any given period, after having observed her income, the agent can walk away from the contract, while the intermediary cannot, i.e. there is one-sided commitment. We consider the extreme scenario that the agents face no costs to walking away, and can sign up with any competing intermediary without any reputational losses. Contrary to intuition, we demonstrate that not only autarky, but also partial and full insurance can obtain, depending on the relative patience of agents and financial intermediaries. Insurance can be provided because in an equilibrium contract an up-front payment effectively locks in the agent with an intermediary. We then show that our contract economy is equivalent to a consumption-savings economy with one-period Arrow securities and a short-sale constraint, similar to Bulow and Rogoff (1989). From this equivalence and our characterization of dynamic contracts it immediately follows that without cost of switching financial intermediaries debt contracts are not sustainable, even though a risk allocation superior to autarky can be achieved.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
10135.
Length: Date of creation: Dec 2003 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10135
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Milton Harris & Bengt Holmstrom, 1981.
"A Theory of Wage Dynamics,"
Discussion Papers
488, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
[Downloadable!]
Malcomson, James M., 1999.
"Individual employment contracts,"
Handbook of Labor Economics,
in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 35, pages 2291-2372
Elsevier.
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