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The Welfare Cost of Asymmetric Information: Evidence from the U.K. Annuity Market

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Author Info
Liran Einav
Amy Finkelstein
Paul Schrimpf
Abstract

Much of the extensive empirical literature on insurance markets has focused on whether adverse selection can be detected. Once detected, however, there has been little attempt to quantify its importance. We start by showing theoretically that the efficiency cost of adverse selection cannot be inferred from reduced form evidence of how "adversely selected" an insurance market appears to be. Instead, an explicit model of insurance contract choice is required. We develop and estimate such a model in the context of the U.K. annuity market. The model allows for private information about risk type (mortality) as well as heterogeneity in preferences over different contract options. We focus on the choice of length of guarantee among individuals who are required to buy annuities. The results suggest that asymmetric information along the guarantee margin reduces welfare relative to a first-best, symmetric information benchmark by about £127 million per year, or about 2 percent of annual premiums. We also find that government mandates, the canonical solution to adverse selection problems, do not necessarily improve on the asymmetric information equilibrium. Depending on the contract mandated, mandates could reduce welfare by as much as £107 million annually, or increase it by as much as £127 million. Since determining which mandates would be welfare improving is empirically difficult, our findings suggest that achieving welfare gains through mandatory social insurance may be harder in practice than simple theory may suggest.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 13228.

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Date of creation: Jul 2007
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13228

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
C13 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: General - - - Estimation
C51 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Construction and Estimation
D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Personal Finance
D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General
D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information

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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Liran Einav & Amy Finkelstein & Mark R. Cullen, 2008. "Estimating Welfare in Insurance Markets Using Variation in Prices," NBER Working Papers 14414, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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