IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/red/issued/10-93.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dynamic Optimal Insurance and Lack of Commitment

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Karaivanov

    (Simon Fraser University)

  • Fernando Martin

    (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)

Abstract

We analyze dynamic risk-sharing contracts between profit-maximizing insurers and risk-averse agents who face idiosyncratic income uncertainty and can self-insure through savings. We study Markov-perfect insurance contracts in which neither party can commit beyond the current period. We show that the limited commitment assumption on the insurer's side is restrictive only when he is endowed with a rate of return advantage and the agent has sufficiently large initial assets. In such a case, the agent's consumption profile is distorted relative to the first-best. In a Markov-perfect equilibrium, the agent's asset holdings determine his outside option each period and are thus an integral part of insurance contracts, unlike when the insurer can commit long-term. (Copyright: Elsevier)

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Karaivanov & Fernando Martin, 2015. "Dynamic Optimal Insurance and Lack of Commitment," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(2), pages 287-305, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:issued:10-93
    DOI: 10.1016/j.red.2014.05.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.red.2014.05.001
    Download Restriction: Access to full texts is restricted to ScienceDirect subscribers and institutional members. See http://www.sciencedirect.com/ for details.

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sleet, Christopher & Yeltekin, Sevin, 2008. "Politically credible social insurance," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 129-151, January.
    2. Daron Acemoglu & Michael Golosov & Oleg Tsyvinski, 2006. "Markets Versus Governments: Political Economy of Mechanisms," 2006 Meeting Papers 348, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Fernando Martin, 2009. "A Positive Theory of Government Debt," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(4), pages 608-631, October.
    4. Ethan Ligon & Jonathan P. Thomas & Tim Worrall, 2002. "Informal Insurance Arrangements with Limited Commitment: Theory and Evidence from Village Economies," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(1), pages 209-244.
    5. Jonathan Thomas & Tim Worrall, 1994. "Foreign Direct Investment and the Risk of Expropriation," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 61(1), pages 81-108.
    6. Bisin, Alberto & Rampini, Adriano A., 2006. "Markets as beneficial constraints on the government," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(4-5), pages 601-629, May.
    7. Helmut Bester & Roland Strausz, "undated". "Imperfect Commitment and the Revelation Principle," Papers 004, Departmental Working Papers.
    8. Abraham, Arpad & Pavoni, Nicola, 2004. "Efficient Allocations with Moral Hazard and Hidden Borrowing and Lending," Working Papers 04-05, Duke University, Department of Economics.
    9. Krueger, Dirk & Uhlig, Harald, 2006. "Competitive risk sharing contracts with one-sided commitment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 1661-1691, October.
    10. Doepke, Matthias & Townsend, Robert M., 2006. "Dynamic mechanism design with hidden income and hidden actions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 235-285, January.
    11. Kalai, Ehud, 1977. "Proportional Solutions to Bargaining Situations: Interpersonal Utility Comparisons," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(7), pages 1623-1630, October.
    12. S. Rao Aiyagari, 1994. "Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk and Aggregate Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 109(3), pages 659-684.
    13. Daron Acemoglu & Michael Golosov & Aleh Tsyvinski, 2008. "Political Economy of Mechanisms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(3), pages 619-641, May.
    14. Bester, Helmut & Strausz, Roland, 2001. "Contracting with Imperfect Commitment and the Revelation Principle: The Single Agent Case," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(4), pages 1077-1098, July.
    15. Fernandes, Ana & Phelan, Christopher, 2000. "A Recursive Formulation for Repeated Agency with History Dependence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 223-247, April.
    16. Harold L. Cole & Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 2001. "Efficient Allocations with Hidden Income and Hidden Storage," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 68(3), pages 523-542.
    17. Christopher Sleet & Sevin Yeltekin, 2006. "Credibility and endogenous societal discounting," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(3), pages 410-437, July.
    18. Natalia Kovrijnykh, 2013. "Debt Contracts with Partial Commitment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(7), pages 2848-2874, December.
    19. Maskin, Eric & Tirole, Jean, 2001. "Markov Perfect Equilibrium: I. Observable Actions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 191-219, October.
    20. Jonathan Thomas & Tim Worrall, 1988. "Self-Enforcing Wage Contracts," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 55(4), pages 541-554.
    21. Liebhafsky, H H, 1969. "New Thoughts About Inferior Goods," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(5), pages 931-934, December.
    22. Allen, Franklin, 1985. "Repeated principal-agent relationships with lending and borrowing," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 17(1-2), pages 27-31.
    23. Karaivanov, Alexander K. & Martin, Fernando M., 2011. "Markov-Perfect Risk Sharing, Moral Hazard and Limited Commitment," Working Papers 2011-030, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 11 Sep 2017.
    24. Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 1996. "Implications of Efficient Risk Sharing without Commitment," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 63(4), pages 595-609.
    25. Arpad Abraham & Nicola Pavoni, 2008. "Efficient Allocations with Moral Hazard and Hidden Borrowing and Lending: A Recursive Formulation," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(4), pages 781-803, October.
    26. Phelan Christopher, 1995. "Repeated Moral Hazard and One-Sided Commitment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 488-506, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Karaivanov, Alexander K. & Martin, Fernando M., 2011. "Markov-Perfect Risk Sharing, Moral Hazard and Limited Commitment," Working Papers 2011-030, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 11 Sep 2017.
    2. Karaivanov, Alexander K. & Martin, Fernando M., 2016. "Market Power and Asset Contractibility in Dynamic Insurance Contracts," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 98(2), pages 111-127.
    3. Oikonomou, Rigas, 2013. "Optimal Unemployment Insurance with Private Insurance," MPRA Paper 55726, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Optimal insurance; Lack of commitment; Markov-perfect equilibrium;

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

    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:red:issued:10-93. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Christian Zimmermann). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.html .

    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.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.