The case for an increase in the role of insurance provision in the fight against poverty and vulnerability is well-established. This paper asks how it can be more effectively delivered to the poor, and what its role should be relative to other microfinance programmes, safety nets and informal insurance systems. It focuses on the various interactions, including how insurance may crowd out credit...

In recent years the number of formal risk-sharing schemes for health care services in Ghana has risen rapidly. At present about 42 out of 110 districts are operating some form of formal community-based health insurance, which are voluntary and to a greater extent integrated to health care facilities. The success of these schemes depend largely on the extent to which they directly or indirectly ...

This paper answers the question posed in the title within a model where agents receive idiosyncratic, wage-rate shocks that are privately observed. When the model social insurance system is comprised by the US social security and income tax system, then the maximum ex-ante welfare gain to improved insurance is equivalent to a 12.3 percent increase in consumption. We determine the reasons behind...

In this article, we investigate the valuation of insurance derivatives which facilitate the trading of insurance risks on capital markets, such as catastrophe derivatives that were traded at the Chicago Board of Trade. These instruments have to be priced relative to observed insurance premiums that are written on the same underlying risks to exclude any arbitrage opportunities. We derive a repr...

We present a model of life-insurance purchase that takes into account the age of the beneficiary. The beneficiaries considered herein are young children with no resources whose consumption needs are protected by purchasing life insurance if the breadwinner dies. We show that income transfer grows as the child ages; however, the size of contingent bequest shrinks because the need for protection ...

Background Despite the implementation of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) since 2005 in Nigeria, the level of health insurance coverage remains low. The study aims to examine the predictors of enrolment in the NHIS among women of reproductive age in Nigeria.   Methods Secondary data from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) were utilized to ex...

Social Insurance Networks Based on administrative panel data from Norway, we examine how social insurance dependency spreads within neighborhoods, families, ethnic minorities, and among former schoolmates. We use a fixed effects methodology that accounts for endogenous group formation, contextual interactions, and time-constant as well as time-varying confounders. We report evidence that social...

Most risk-sharing tests on developing country data are conducted at the level of the village; generally, the full risk-sharing hypothesis is rejected. This paper uses detailed data on all insurance networks within a village in Tanzania; networks are not clustered but largely overlapping. We test whether full risk-sharing occurs within these networks. While village level full-insurance cannot be...

We examine the proposal by Peter Zweifel and Michael Breuer to combine risk-based premiums with a subsidy for individuals whose expenditure for health insurance exceeds a certain share of income. Assuming a maximin social welfare function and optimal linear income taxation, we find that this proposal is superior to social insurance if the correlation between productivity and health is not too l...

In this paper, we analyze the use of fiscal and monetary instruments to improve long-run welfare when productive investment is irreversible and uncollateralizable and there is no insurance. Only fiat money or government-issued bonds provide self-insurance. We demonstrate that an increase in precautionary savings reduces irreversible productive investment. Hence, subsidies to promote productive ...