Behavioral Aspects In Insurance Market

The insurance industry has an essential economic importance.In spite of the great progress,we have to emphase that the existing theoretic models cannot entirely explain the mechanism of the insurance market and of its decisional process,especially in the case of the events with low probabilities.That is the point where the behavioral economists come with a larger view of the factors that influence the consumer decision explained through the Prospect Theory of Kahneman and Tversky, through the Cumulative Prospect Theory that represents an enhanced view of the Prospect Theory and Prelec function.The concept of utility is also detailed in some extend in this paper contribuing to a larger perspective about decision in insurance market and its role in the development of insurance market.Prospect theory tries to emphasize the role of psychological effects upon the consumption decision showing that the economic agent does not have a rational behavior and is not risk averse in all situation.In this paper there are showed and debated some situation in which psychological effects like loss aversion, reference point, status-quo and framming effects can influence the deccision of the consumer and are not consistent with the standard economic model.In addition to this aspects, Cumulative Prspect Theory enhance the fact that decision makers overestimate low peobabilities and underestimate high probabilities,thus buying inadequate insurance in many situation.in thiss sense, in order to support this idea I tried to make a qualitative presentation of the model used on the insurance market using Prelec function which is the function related with the Cumulative Prospect Theory which can be used in the insurance context.The weak points of the theory of expected utility are explained through this new perspectives and nevertheless aspects like insensivity to bad news concerning incomes,elasticity of price,displacements of status-quo and default,disposition effect and equity premium are taken into consideration.As example,I chose a Kunreuther experiment about insurance decision in with is underlyined the fact that for moderate risk people buy insurance with premiums that exceed the expected loss.There are demands for low deductibles in the the markets for extended guarantees and insurances for mobile phones where was observed that the insurance underwriting rate increases with the probability of loss keeping the expected loss constant.It is better to mention that the theory and the model that are presented here comes as complementary to the economic standard theory not as a substitute.