This paper demonstrates that informal care by family members significantly weakens the demand for long-term care insurance. This result is largely driven by the fact that insurance does not cover informal care costs. To quantify the effect of informal care on insurance demand and evaluate potential welfare-improving policies, I develop and estimate a dynamic model of long-term care decisions be...

When a firm offers health benefits to workers, it exposes the firm to the risk of making payments when workers get sick. A firm can either pay health expenses out of its general assets, keeping the risk inside the firm, or it can purchase insurance, shifting the risk outside the firm. Using data on insurance decisions, we find that smaller firms, firms with more investment opportunities, and fi...

This paper develops a theory of informal insurance in the presence of an intertemporal technology. It is shown that when an insurance agreement suffers from enforcement problems, constraints on individual savings behaviour can enable the group to sustain greater cooperation. This result provides a motivation for a variety of social norms observed in traditional societies which discourage ‘exces...

This report describes the organisation of the Belgian long-term care system. It can be characterised as a mixed system, with extensive public care provision and the substantial support of informal care provided mainly within the family. While the current volume and quality of services appears to be adequate, the future increase in the number of dependent elderly persons over the next two decade...

This paper analyses the willingness-to-pay (WTP) of forest owners for insurance against natural hazards such as fire. The objective is to identify the determinants of forest owner’s participation to insurance and insurance demand. In particular, we are interested in the impact of different types of public compensation: fixed help, contingent fixed help and insurance subsidy. We also analyse the...

We survey over 100 financial planners to assess their reasoning mode, intertemporal choices, risk aversion and preferences, and framing focus. Using the Cognitive Reflection Test, we find that financial planners are more analytical than the general population. Further tests show that the analytical planners are more financially patient and perform better in intertemporal choice problems. These ...

Carefree? Participation and Pay Differentials for Informal Carers in Britain A substantial proportion of working age individuals in Britain are looking after sick, disabled, and elderly people and combine work and caring responsibilities. Using the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) for the years 1991 to 2002 this paper studies the determinants of labour market participation as well as earnin...

This paper estimates the effect of informal care provision on female caregiver’s health. We use data from the German Socio-economic Panel and assess effects up to seven years after care provision. A simulation-based sensitivity analysis scrutinizes the sensitivity of the results with respect to potential deviations from the conditional independence assumption in the regression adjusted matching...

Informal and Formal Care in Europe Government expenditure on formal residential care and home-help services for the elderly significantly reduces 45-59 year old women’s informal care-giving affecting both the extensive and the intensive margin. Allowing for country fixed-effects and country-specific trends and correcting for attrition, the estimates – based on the European Community Household P...