This paper explores the level and dispersion of premiums paid for individual health insurance by comparing asking price' data posted on an electronic insurance exchange with survey data on premiums actually paid in the period just before the advent of electronic exchanges. The primary theoretical question is whether the pattern of differences between asking prices and transactions prices can be explained using a simple search theory. We hypothesize, following suggestions of Stigler and Rothschild, that higher risks who expect to pay higher premiums for a given policy will engage in more intensive search than lower risks, given the same distribution of asking prices. As a result, for a given distribution of asking prices, the dispersion of premiums actually paid (transactions prices) will be smaller for higher risks. Therefore, the introduction of an electronic exchange should have a larger potential influence on the dispersion and level of premiums paid for lower risks than for higher risks. We find evidence consistent with each of these hypotheses.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
9299.
Length: Date of creation: Oct 2002 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9299
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Find related papers by JEL classification: D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search, Learning, and Information G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies
References listed on IDEAS 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.:
Fiona Scott Morton & Florian Zettelmeyer & Jorge Silva Risso, 2000.
"Internet Car Retailing,"
NBER Working Papers
7961, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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