Numerous investigations have been directed toward aspects of rational life insurance purch&es and optimal coverage levels under differing conditions. Most of these studies have taken as "given" the design of life insurance contracts and have focused on optimal consumer responses to available insurance opportunities.' However, in works by Borch (1960, 1983), Arrow (1963, 1974) and Raviv (1979), ...

Insurance contracts with multiple levels of deductibles (henceforth MLD contracts) are very common. The major goal of this paper is to suggest theoretical foundations for the prevalence of this type of contracts when agents have different, not necessarily concave, utility functions that are private information. We show that an important property of such contracts is that they reduce risk in the...

Can insurance cost-effectively mitigate the increasingly deleterious impacts of climate risk on poverty and food insecurity? The theory reviewed in this chapter suggests an affirmative answer if well-designed insurance contracts can be implemented and priced at a reasonable level despite the uncertainties that attend climate change. Evidence from the IBLI index insurance project in the pastoral...

Prologue: Canada’s provincial health insurance scheme is a source of endless fascination to policymakers advocating health system reform. Whether one is an advocate or a or a detractor of Canada’s plan us a model for the United States, an important issue that engages the antagonists is how much it costs to operate compared with America’s pluralistic and mostly private health insurance approach....

Prologue: Canada’s provincial health insurance scheme is a source of endless fascination to policymakers advocating health system reform. Whether one is an advocate or a or a detractor of Canada’s plan us a model for the United States, an important issue that engages the antagonists is how much it costs to operate compared with America’s pluralistic and mostly private health insurance approach....

Using a large linked employer-employee data set, this paper studies the extent to which employers insure workers against transitory and permanent firm-level shocks. Particular emphasis is given to the question of whether the amount of wage insurance depends on the nature of industrial relations. Adopting the identification strategy proposed by Guiso et al. (2005), it is shown that wage insuranc...