IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lec/leecon/10-12.html

The Behavioral Economics of Insurance

Author

Listed:
  • Ali al-Nowaihi

  • Sanjit Dhami

Abstract

We focus on four stylized facts of behavior under risk. Decision makers: (1) Overweight low probabilities and underweight high probabilities. (2) Ignore events of extremely low probability and treat extremely high probability events as certain. (3) Buy inadequate insurance for very low probability events. (4) Keeping the expected loss fixed, there is a probability below which the take-up of insurance drops dramatically. Expected utility (EU) fails on 1-4. Existing models of rank dependent utility (RDU) and cumulative prospect theory (CP) satisfy 1 but fail on 2, 3, 4. We propose a new class of axiomatically-founded probability weighting functions, the composite Prelec weighting functions CPF) that simultaneously account for 1 and 2. When CPF are combined with RDU and CP we get respectively, composite rank dependent utility (CRDU) and composite cumulative prospect theory (CCP). Both CRDU and CCP are able to successfully explain 1-4. CCP is, however, more satisfactory than CRDU because it incorporates the empirically robust phenomena of reference dependence and loss aversion.

Suggested Citation

  • Ali al-Nowaihi & Sanjit Dhami, 2010. "The Behavioral Economics of Insurance," Discussion Papers in Economics 10/12, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester, revised Apr 2010.
    • Handle: RePEc:lec:leecon:10/12
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.le.ac.uk/economics/research/RePEc/lec/leecon/dp10-12.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ali al-Nowaihi & Sanjit Dhami, 2010. "Composite Prospect Theory: A proposal to combine ‘prospect theory’ and ‘cumulative prospect theory’," Discussion Papers in Economics 10/11, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    2. Bar-Ilan, Avner & Sacerdote, Bruce, 2004. "The Response of Criminals and Noncriminals to Fines," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(1), pages 1-17, April.
    3. Ali al-Nowaihi & Sanjit Dhami, 2010. "Probability Weighting Functions," Discussion Papers in Economics 10/10, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    4. Williams, A.F. & Lund, A.K., 1986. "Seat belt use laws and occupant crash protection in the United States," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 76(12), pages 1438-1442.
    5. Ali al-Nowaihi & Ian Bradley & Sanjit Dhami, 2006. "The Utility Function Under Prospect Theory," Discussion Papers in Economics 06/15, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    6. Chris Starmer, 2000. "Developments in Non-expected Utility Theory: The Hunt for a Descriptive Theory of Choice under Risk," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(2), pages 332-382, June.
    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. Chimuka Leo Haamukwanza, 2021. "To insure or not to insure—the role that government and insurance practice should play: a thematic comparison of the urban poor and the workers in the pensions and insurance industry," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(9), pages 1-20, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ali al-Nowaihi & Sanjit Dhami, 2010. "Composite Prospect Theory: A proposal to combine ‘prospect theory’ and ‘cumulative prospect theory’," Discussion Papers in Economics 10/11, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    2. Ali al-Nowaihi & Sanjit Dhami, 2010. "Probability Weighting Functions," Discussion Papers in Economics 10/10, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester.
    3. Sanjit Dhami & Ali al-Nowaihi, 2010. "The Behavioral Economics of Crime and Punishment," Discussion Papers in Economics 10/14, Division of Economics, School of Business, University of Leicester, revised Jul 2010.
    4. Dhami, Sanjit & al-Nowaihi, Ali, 2013. "An extension of the Becker proposition to non-expected utility theory," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 10-20.
    5. Antonio Nicita & Matteo Rizzolli, 2014. "In Dubio Pro Reo. Behavioral Explanations of Pro-defendant Bias in Procedures," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 60(3), pages 554-580.
    6. Francesco GUALA, 2017. "Preferences: Neither Behavioural nor Mental," Departmental Working Papers 2017-05, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    7. Filiz-Ozbay, Emel & Guryan, Jonathan & Hyndman, Kyle & Kearney, Melissa & Ozbay, Erkut Y., 2015. "Do lottery payments induce savings behavior? Evidence from the lab," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 1-24.
    8. Roos, Michael W. M., 2015. "The macroeconomics of radical uncertainty," Ruhr Economic Papers 592, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    9. Dagsvik, John K., 2015. "Stochastic models for risky choices: A comparison of different axiomatizations," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 81-88.
    10. Bocqueho, Geraldine & Jacquet, Florence & Reynaud, Arnaud, 2011. "Expected Utility or Prospect Theory Maximizers? Results from a Structural Model based on Field-experiment Data," 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland 114257, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    11. Luís Santos-Pinto & Adrian Bruhin & José Mata & Thomas Åstebro, 2015. "Detecting heterogeneous risk attitudes with mixed gambles," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 79(4), pages 573-600, December.
    12. Chetan Dave & Catherine Eckel & Cathleen Johnson & Christian Rojas, 2010. "Eliciting risk preferences: When is simple better?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 219-243, December.
    13. Ehud Lehrer, 2009. "A new integral for capacities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 39(1), pages 157-176, April.
    14. Enrico Diecidue & Peter Wakker & Marcel Zeelenberg, 2007. "Eliciting decision weights by adapting de Finetti’s betting-odds method to prospect theory," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 179-199, June.
    15. Michele Belot & Philipp Kircher & Paul Muller, 2021. "Eliciting time preferences when income and consumption vary: Theory, validation & application to job search," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 21-013/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    16. Chiu, W. Henry, 2019. "Comparative statics in an ordinal theory of choice under risk," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 113-123.
    17. Kemal Ozbek, 2024. "Expected utility, independence, and continuity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 97(1), pages 1-22, August.
    18. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Segal, Uzi, 2014. "Transitive regret over statistically independent lotteries," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 237-248.
    19. Gómez-Limón, José A. & Gutiérrez-Martín, Carlos & Riesgo, Laura, 2016. "Modeling at farm level: Positive Multi-Attribute Utility Programming," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 17-27.
    20. Riddel, Mary C. & Shaw, W. Douglass, 2006. "A Theoretically-Consistent Empirical Non-Expected Utility Model of Ambiguity: Nuclear Waste Mortality Risk and Yucca Mountain," Pre-Prints 23964, Texas A&M University, Department of Agricultural Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C60 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - General
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:lec:leecon:10/12. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic 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.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Abbie Sleath (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deleiuk.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.