Insurance decisions for low-probability losses

Springer Science and Business Media LLC - Tập 39 - Trang 17-44 - 2009
Susan K. Laury1, Melayne Morgan McInnes2, J. Todd Swarthout1
1Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA
2University of South Carolina, Columbia, (USA)

Tóm tắt

It is widely accepted that individuals tend to underinsure against low-probability, high-loss events relative to high-probability, low-loss events. This conventional wisdom is based largely on field studies, as there is very little experimental evidence. We reexamine this issue with an experiment that accounts for possible confounds in prior insurance experiments. Our results are counter to the prior experimental evidence, as we observe subjects buying more insurance for lower-probability events than for higher-probability events, given a constant expected loss and load factor. Insofar as underinsurance for catastrophic risk is observed in the field, our results suggest that this can be attributed to factors other than only the relative probability of the loss events.

Tài liệu tham khảo

Anderson, D. R. (1974). The national flood insurance program: Problems and potential. Journal of Risk and Insurance, 41, 579–599. Anderson, L., & Mellor, J. (2007). Predicting health behaviors with experimental measures of risk aversion. Technical report, Department of Economics, College of William and Mary. Camerer, C. F., & Hogarth, R. M. (1999). The effects of financial incentives in experiments: A review and capital-labor-production framework. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 19, 7–42. Chabris, C. F., Laibson, D., Morris, C. L., Schuldt, J. P., & Taubinsky, D. (2008). Individual laboratory-measured discount rates predict field behavior. Technical report, National Bureau of Economic Research. Ganderton, P. T., Brookshire, D. S., McKee, M., Stewart, S., & Thurston, H. (2000). Buying insurance for disaster-type risks: Experimental evidence. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 20, 271–289. Harbaugh, W., Krause, K., & Vesterlund, L. (2005). The fourfold pattern of risk attitudes in choice and pricing tasks. Working paper, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Economics. Harrington, S. E., & Niehaus, G. (2003). Capital, corporate income taxes, and catastrophe insurance. Journal of Financial Intermediation, 12, 365–389. Harrison, G. W., Johnson, E., McInnes, M. M., & Rutström, E. E. (2005). Risk aversion and incentive effects: Comment. American Economic Review, 95, 897–901. Holt, C. A., & Laury, S. K. (2002). Risk aversion and incentive effects. American Economic Review, 92, 1644–1655. Holt, C. A., & Laury, S. K. (2005). Risk aversion and incentive effects: New data without order effects. American Economic Review, 95, 902–912. Krantz, D. H., & Kunreuther, H. C. (2007). Goals and plans in decision making. Judgement and Decision Making, 2, 137–168. Kunreuther, H., Novemsky, N., & Kahneman, D. (2001). Making low probabilities useful. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 23, 103–120. Kunreuther, H., & Pauly, M. (2004). Neglecting disaster: Why don’t people insure against large losses? Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 28, 5–21. Kunreuther, H., & Pauly, M. (2005). Insurance decision-making and market behavior. Foundations and Trends in Microeconomics, 1, 63–127. McClelland, G. H., Schulze, W. D., & Coursey, D. L. (1993). Insurance for low-probability hazards: A bimodal response to unlikely events. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 7, 95–116. Pauly, M., Percy, A., & Herring, B. (1999). Individual versus job-based health insurance: Weighing the pros and cons. Health Affairs, 18, 28–44. Sheskin, D. J. (2007). Handbook of parametric and nonparametric statistical procedures (4th ed.). Boca Raton: Chapman & Hall/CRC. Slovic, P., Fischhoff, B., Lichtenstein, S., Corrigan, B., & Combs, B. (1977). Preference for insuring against probable small losses: Insurance implications. Journal of Risk and Insurance, 44, 237–258. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1992). Advances in prospect theory: Cumulative representation of uncertainty. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 5, 297–323.