IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecinqu/v54y2016i1p450-463.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is There Adverse Selection In Life Insurance Markets?

Author

Listed:
  • David Hedengren
  • Thomas Stratmann

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="ecin12212-abs-0001"> Adverse selection theory predicts people with a high risk of death are more likely to own life insurance. Using a unique data set merging administrative and survey records, we test this theory and find the opposite: people with high death risk are less likely to own life insurance. We postulate advantageous selection and price discrimination swamp adverse selection in individual life insurance markets. To determine which effect is more powerful, we analyze group life insurance markets, where insurance companies cannot price discriminate as well as in individual markets. Our data suggest that price discrimination has a stronger effect than advantageous selection. (JEL D8, G1, I1)

Suggested Citation

  • David Hedengren & Thomas Stratmann, 2016. "Is There Adverse Selection In Life Insurance Markets?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(1), pages 450-463, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:54:y:2016:i:1:p:450-463
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ecin.2016.54.issue-1
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Timothy F. Harris & Aaron Yelowitz & Charles Courtemanche, 2021. "Did COVID‐19 change life insurance offerings?," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 88(4), pages 831-861, December.
    2. Timothy F. Harris & Aaron Yelowitz, 2018. "Life Insurance Holdings And Well‐Being Of Surviving Spouses," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(3), pages 526-538, July.
    3. Timothy F. Harris & Aaron Yelowitz, 2017. "Nudging Life Insurance Holdings In The Workplace," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(2), pages 951-981, April.
    4. Timothy F. Harris & Aaron Yelowitz & Jeffery Talbert & Alison Davis, 2023. "Adverse selection in the group life insurance market," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(4), pages 911-941, October.
    5. Ropponen, Olli & Kuusi, Tero & Valkonen, Tarmo, 2022. "Mind the Gap – Assessing the Size and Determinants of the Life Insurance Gap," ETLA Working Papers 96, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    6. Harris, Timothy F. & Yelowitz, Aaron & Talbert, Jeffery & Davis, Alison, 2022. "Adverse Selection in the Group Life Insurance Market," IZA Discussion Papers 14985, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Srbinoski Bojan & Strozzi Fernanda & Poposki Klime & Born Patricia H., 2020. "Trends in Life Insurance Demand and Lapse Literature," Asia-Pacific Journal of Risk and Insurance, De Gruyter, vol. 14(2), pages 1-46, July.
    8. Bauchet, Jonathan & Chakravarty, Sugato & Hunter, Brian, 2018. "Separating the wheat from the chaff: Signaling in microfinance loans," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 40-50.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health

    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:bla:ecinqu:v:54:y:2016:i:1:p:450-463. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    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.